The House On Nazareth Hill

by Ramsey Campbell

  Clouds had drawn a stained white sheet over the sky. Beneath it, at the end of Little Hope Way, the Christmas lights flared doggedly, doing their best to celebrate their last day. Children of about the age she’d been when her father had lifted her up to Nazarill were riding new bicycles around the perimeter of the market. One jingled a bell at her as she dodged into a gap in a haphazard parade of shopping trolleys and hurried whenever she could to the bookstall.

  From a distance the bald bearded stallholder’s face reminded her of a trick illustration which you could invert and still have a face. She saw that wasn’t possible as he straightened up to give a female customer a smile which involved producing the tip of his tongue between his teeth. ‘Nowt wrong with romance. I could do with a bit in my life,’ he said, and noticed Amy. ‘I haven’t forgotten you, girlie. Haven’t turned it up yet.’

  The woman included Amy in the frown she’d been aiming at him, then dumped her parcel of books done up in second-hand gift-wrapping in her wheeled basket and sped it away. ‘Might have been on there,’ the bookseller complained, then let Amy glimpse a grin not too far from apologetic. ‘Get many books for Christmas?’

  ‘Not since I was little. I’m looking for some now.’

  ‘Cart away all you can carry with my blessing. How about some of these fat individuals? The History of Mattresses? Secrets of Town Planning? Slimming Through the Ages? Not much call for that with you young bonesters. Insects, Our Household Companions? Character Analysis Through Clothing?’

  By now Amy was sure he was inventing at least some of the titles as he tapped spines with an increasingly dusty fingertip. ‘Something about witches,’ she said.

  ‘Ah, you’ve heard about them.’

  ‘About…’

  ‘The Partington Witches.’

  ‘What about them? I mean who, what…’

  ‘Weren’t they supposed to dance up on Nazareth Hill?’

  He sounded convinced she knew more than she did. ‘I don’t know anything about it,’ she insisted. ‘When did they?’

  ‘Must have been before your place was a hospital. Just a ruin, there’d have been.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me about them last time?’

  ‘You never asked.’

  He was gazing at her as though one of them was joking, but Amy’s gaze more than equalled his. ‘I’m asking now. What else do you know?’

  ‘Same as I already told you. They used to go there to dance and whatever else they got up to at night. If they were doing it that close to the houses you’d have to reckon they thought the hill was some kind of special place. That’s if you believed in them.’

  ‘You haven’t got any books with them in.’

  ‘Aren’t any that I know of. If your witches ever existed, they didn’t last long. Maybe someone made them up to put the fear of God in kids, that’s when you could.’

  ‘How about books about witches?’

  ‘None of those either. I’ve got none at the moment, that’s to say. Pretty popular, they are. Hang on, girlie,’ he said, though Amy had made no move, ‘there might be this.’

  He extracted one of a pile of books that were doing duty as a bookend and throwing open the faded red cover, leafed through until he found a plate. ‘Take a look at these,’ he said, twisting the volume towards her. ‘That’d put the fear of God into you all right, what they used to do to them. Swung them around till they couldn’t stand up, stuck needles in them, chucked them in the drink, and is it water they’re shoving down her throat through that funnel? And when they’d had their fun with them they hung them on a tree.’

  The plate reproduced several small woodcuts depicting these activities. The faces of the torturers and of their victims bore exactly the same look of grim determination. The title of the book was The Joys of Torture, Amy saw. Somebody had added breasts to all the male victims with a blue ballpoint. The bookseller was watching her reactions; for a moment she felt enclosed with him and the book. She straightened up, and the sounds of the market seemed to explode around her. ‘This isn’t your book, is it?’ she said.

  ‘Wouldn’t have it in the house. Only in the garridge,’ he said, and in some of this playful tone ‘Are you taking it? Christmas special. Going cheap for a scarce book.’

  She was about to clap it shut and wave it away when he glanced past her. ‘Shift over so this chap can get at the Westerns,’ he said, then his voice blunted itself. ‘Oh, you’re with her.’

  The possibility of having been caught out made Amy feel as defensive as he sounded. When she swung to confront the newcomer, her revived headache reached for the top of her spine. ‘Oh, it’s you,’ she said, but not for the reason she’d prepared to, because it wasn’t her father. ‘Still interested in books, I see,’ Leonard Stoddard said.

  She was considering a retort along the lines of hoping he was too when he leaned his large skewed face over to examine the book which the stallholder had defiantly left open where it was. ‘What’s this? What are you getting mixed up with now?’

  ‘He was showing me how they used to treat witches.’ Amy pushed the book away and waited for the librarian’s face more or less to line up with hers. ‘Do you think you’d have any—’

  ‘We’d certainly have no books like that in any library we’re connected with. That sort of thing may have gone on once, but it’s time we forgot about it if we want to progress. Digging it up does nobody any good, particularly not at your age.’

  ‘Any books about witches, I was going to say if you’d let me finish.’

  ‘Only in the little children’s section. I should think you’d be too old for fairy tales. Pamelle is.’

  Maybe his daughter was too busy devising names for herself to have time to read, thought Amy. Could the libraries be quite as useless as he wanted her to believe? The stallholder closed the book with some force to remind his possibly potential customers he was still there, and she transferred her attention to him. ‘Shall I put witches on your wants list?’ he said.

  ‘Wants list.’

  ‘As well as the book about where you live.’

  ‘I live there too,’ Leonard Stoddard said, ‘and I think I’d be aware of anything about the place.’

  ‘Good job someone else is, then. Get her to give you a lend when I come up with it.’

  ‘Perhaps you should tell him what you said, Amy.’

  She was tempted to take this request at face value, but instead she told the bookseller ‘You don’t know I said anything, do you?’

  He shook his head once slowly, and after a heavy pause the librarian said ‘I hope we can keep it that way. Are you going home now?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I should, to hide this,’ he said, showing her a small package wrapped in gold paper and tied with a silver bow. ‘Pamelle’s birthday next week.’

  Amy didn’t know if he was hinting she should buy a present or making her aware of not having been invited to the party, nor did she care. She’d thought of someone who would be able to help her in her search for information: Martie always kept books on the occult in stock, and surely that wasn’t so far removed from whatever Amy needed to know.

  A van was parked outside Hedz Not Fedz, where several women were hefting cartons out of the back of the vehicle. They looked too permed and overcoated to be customers of Martie’s, and in a moment Amy recognised that they were carrying their burdens into Charity Worldwide next door. She stood back for two women before dodging past the van, the reflection of which was making the window of Hedz Not Fedz appear to be boarded up. She was at the doorway when she saw the window was indeed obscured, its inside covered with plasterboard, and the glass was smashed in two places. Down in the nearer bottom corner was a handwritten notice on which a great many stars surrounded a very few words. SORRY! MOVED TO MANCHESTER.

  She tried the door anyway, then stepped back to gaze at it with all the reproach she was feeling for Martie. The women had stopped unloading the van to watch her. Though none of them gave the impression of b
eing especially sympathetic, one took pity on her. ‘What’s the woe, love? Hadn’t you heard she was gone?’

  ‘No,’ Amy admitted, and instantly wished she hadn’t, because Shaun Pickles had strayed out of the marketplace to overhear both question and answer. His bony face looked less productive of hair than ever, and had intensified its mottling as a crackle of his walkie-talkie betrayed his presence. He shrugged his shoulders or squared them and stuck out his chin above his tight uniform collar. ‘Not much of a loss if you ask me,’ he said.

  ‘Nobody did,’ she snapped, and walked so vigorously at him that one of the bystanders gasped. Once she was out of the space cramped by the van and the abandoned shop, she rounded on him. ‘I’ll bet you had something to do with it, didn’t you?’

  ‘Didn’t need to have. I couldn’t stop folk smashing her windows and posting what they did through her slot while I wasn’t there, could I? Waved my hank right enough when she drove off in her bus painted all over with the Lord only knows what crap.’

  Amy remembered the minibus covered with images of flowers from a different and presumably better world. ‘Not missing her, are you?’ the guard said. ‘She can’t have been much of a friend if she didn’t tell you she was off. Unreliable all round from what I hear. Always late with her rent and the rest of her bills.’

  ‘Is that why they told you not to look after her shop?’

  She saw him considering how to answer, and wondered if he was stupid enough either to agree or to claim the decision for his own. Abruptly she didn’t care. She was thinking of heading for Rob’s when Pickles said ‘Heard you the other night.’

  ‘What an honour for me.’

  ‘Don’t listen if you can’t be bothered. I just thought it was interesting.’

  Amy halted by a butcher’s stall. Could she afford to reject anyone who would listen to her, however unappealing they otherwise were? ‘What sort of interesting?’ she said.

  ‘Well, I’ll tell you.’ He paced up to her and put his hands behind his back. ‘My mam called me down when she heard it was you, so I got nearly everything. I heard whatever you want to call it.’

  ‘I don’t know. I’m not sure.’

  ‘I could tell you.’

  ‘You know about things like that, do you?’

  ‘Too bloody much.’

  ‘You mean you believe in them? Are you saying something like that happened to you?’

  ‘Me? Me?’ He displayed his fists before using all his fingers to indicate himself. ‘Hang on,’ he said with an effort she was meant to notice. ‘What do you reckon we’re on about here?’

  Amy saw her mistake, and couldn’t suppress a giggle. ‘I thought we were talking about what I said I saw.’

  ‘That’s a laugh. I hope you don’t think I swallowed any of that. Maybe your dad ought to be wondering what you were on when you saw it. I’ll bet he’ll be glad to hear that shop’s closed down.’

  Amy felt she’d had more than her portion of him. She was retreating alongside the butcher’s stall when the guard said ‘Don’t you want to hear what I was going to say?’

  He was holding his hands apart in front of his chest as though to demonstrate some measurement. ‘What you thought was interesting, you mean,’ Amy said, and waited.

  ‘Just how you seem to get on so well with, you know, people who aren’t what God made them. The one who ran the shop and that one on the radio.’ With each sentence he took a pace closer and lowered his voice. ‘We were discussing it at home after you were on. My mam said it was a phase some of us go through at your age. Only the feller you hang around with, him with all the hair and the ring in his nose, he should have gone through it by now if he’s going, shouldn’t he? I’ll tell you something though, I never went through it. So if you want to try a real man for a change, how about it? I don’t like to see someone like yourself going to waste when you could be someone.’

  The butcher grabbed a gutted rabbit that was dangling head down from a hook. A smell of raw meat invaded Amy’s nostrils, and she could have taken it to be the smell of the inflamed patches on Shaun Pickles’ face. She felt sick, then furious, then hysterically amused. ‘Speak up,’ she said loudly. ‘I can’t hear you.’

  ‘Course you can.’ Nevertheless he raised his voice a fraction, at the cost of some further mottling to his cheeks. ‘What didn’t you?’

  ‘Go through it again and I’ll tell you, only speak as loud as this.’

  ‘Keep it down. You’re disturbing people.’

  ‘Just this loud, then. That’s not too loud when there’s so much noise already.’

  ‘You’re making a scene. I’ll have to ask you to move on if you don’t quiet down.’

  ‘That’s it, like you’re speaking now. Go on, say what you were saying to me before, unless you’re ashamed to repeat it in public.’

  Several stallholders and at least as many shoppers were watching them, and now the staff of a video library came to the shop window. Pickles stared at the audience, then snatched the walkie-talkie from his belt and wagged its plump black aerial at her. ‘Move along, please. You’re causing a disturbance.’

  ‘What else do you think you just did to me?’ Amy reminded herself that she’d had enough of him some minutes ago, and began to stroll away, wishing that tension wouldn’t stiffen her legs. When she saw him following, however, she called ‘You stay back or I’ll tell everyone what you were saying to me. Stay right back.’

  She had to shout at him again more than once before she reached Little Hope Way. While she took her time over walking up the brief street he stood at the end of it, thumbs stretching his belt. He wasn’t worth another shout, although he made her feel as if she was being returned to Nazarill. She strolled between the gateposts and shook her head at the security lights as they flattened the facade against the sunset above the moors.

  Her anger with Shaun Pickles and with Martie saw her through the ground floor and up the stairs. Once she’d slammed her door she was able to keep the rest of the building out of her mind. Beyond the window of the living-room the market stalls were toppling with as little noise as distant pins. Amy played an Abnormal Smears video to distract herself from the silence and sat at the table with a glass of fizzy Zingo, trying to rub some ideas either out of or into her forehead. She hadn’t conjured up a single word to write on her pad when the tape relented long enough to allow the buzzer in the hall a chance.

  A glance through the spyhole let her open the door. She knew the large-boned woman’s amiable face and her blond hair that fell about as far down the back of her white silk blouse as her terse skirt extended down her black-nyloned thighs. She offered a smile with her wide lips shut and a wave that kept her elbow pressed against her rib-cage. ‘Amy, isn’t it?’

  ‘Hello, Mrs—’

  ‘Mrs Nothing. Donna will do. We’re both girls, aren’t we?’ She widened her eyes as those members of Abnormal Smears who sang abandoned it so as to apply themselves to extracting more volume from their instruments. ‘Is this a good time? I was just after a word.’

  ‘I was only listening while my dad’s out.’

  ‘How long will he be, do you think?’

  ‘Probably a while yet, knowing him. He likes talking to his customers.’

  ‘A bit lonely, is he?’

  This interpretation hadn’t occurred to Amy; she’d assumed loquaciousness was a requirement of the job. ‘Maybe,’ she said, not wanting to consider the issue now.

  ‘Old enough to know his own mind and sort himself out if he wants to,’ Donna took her to mean, which Amy supposed she might have, given the opportunity for reflection. ‘Do you think you’ve time for a little chat and your music afterwards, or just turned down a smidge?’

  ‘I expect.’

  Donna closed the door and lingered in the hall. ‘I’d forgotten your big eyes. I don’t think I’d like to find them waiting when I got up in the wee hours for a sprinkle.’ She must have realised Amy might feel the same way, even if not previously, because she
darted to another subject. ‘Do I take it since your mother—I mean, there hasn’t been anyone else.’

  ‘I don’t think he’s bothered.’

  ‘I’m certain I would be.’

  She could easily have said that Amy would think differently when she was older, and Amy switched off the television as a token of appreciation. ‘You don’t need to turn—’ Donna protested. ‘Well, whichever you like.’

  Amy recognised that politeness was assumed to involve this kind of pretence as you grew up, and so she let it pass. ‘Drink?’ she said.

  ‘If you are. Oh, you already are. I won’t then, thanks. Let’s just gab while we’ve the chance.’

  Amy curled up in an armchair and Donna sat opposite, exposing more thigh with a whisper of tight skirt and nylon. Seated, she seemed less certain how to proceed. ‘So,’ she began, only to follow that with a smile no words could slip through. After some seconds she said ‘I don’t know if you heard a few of us were talking to your father.’

  ‘When? What about?’ said Amy, and with resignation ‘Oh.’

  ‘That was it, really, your moment of fame.’

  ‘Who was saying what?’

  ‘Mr Shrift thought it could attract the wrong kind of sightseer. Mind you, I should think any kind is wrong so far as all of us are concerned. Mr Greenberg, I’d have to say he was angry because according to him you shouldn’t talk about the kind of things you went on the air about, they only distract people from what’s actually bad in the world. Ghosts are, how did he put it, a way of romanticising history is what he said. And Mr Sheen, he mightn’t have said, but I think he was mostly peeved you hadn’t gone to him if you thought there was a story.’

  ‘Maybe I will when there’s more of one. I just had an impulse to go on the radio.’

  ‘I heard him promising your father he wouldn’t touch the story now. It’s yesterday’s news if it was news at all, he said.’

  ‘And what did you say?’