The House On Nazareth Hill

by Ramsey Campbell

  The jaundiced flame was so unsteady it had to be suffering from the damp she could smell in the air. Its light didn’t extend nearly far enough; most of the glow was concentrated in a blotch on the wardrobe door. She turned away as quickly as she thought the flame could stand, and held the match above her head.

  The cluttered floor began to heave like a sea of shadows. Dark shapes leaned out from behind the furniture and dodged back and crept into view again to obscure the flickering walls. The gloom was so unstable that only the pattern of the wallpaper persuaded her the walls weren’t bare and crawling with moisture, and the pattern might have been stains of damp, except that surely it was too regular. At least she could see to find her way back to the foot of the bed, guarded by the four dim faces which appeared to be floating in the cloudy air—but the light was also showing her that the match-book was considerably less than half full, with only seven matches left. She wouldn’t feel safe lying on the bed; she was going to sit on the end of it with the presence of the faces on the wall to reassure her the room hadn’t changed, and the matches in her hand if she absolutely needed to see in order to believe. She paced around the bed, stepping over huddled objects which snatched at her feet with their shadows. She had reached the corner of the mattress when the flame stung her thumb and forefinger. She shook it and it died, and in that instant she glimpsed a face raising itself to peer at her out of the dark of the room.

  She almost dropped the matches. For a moment she didn’t know which way she was facing or where the intruder might be in relation to her—sneaking up behind her or waiting directly in front of her for her to strike a match and illuminate its face? Then she discerned the meagre outline of the door to her left, and made herself turn towards the depths of the room as she fumbled for a match and nearly broke it off too short to be of use. Digging a nail into its root, she twisted it out of the book and dragged the head along the strip.

  The shadows sprang out to greet it. Some crawled about the floor while larger shapes nodded from behind the furniture. The swarming of dimness on the walls seemed to be the only other movement. Amy was striving to persuade herself that she must have imagined the glimpse—that if she didn’t control her imagination, she was lost—when her gaze was drawn where she least wanted it to go: to the mirror.

  Her poster wasn’t in it. Bare bricks were, even less well-lit than the walls around her but visibly coated with moisture. Was there also an object at the base of the mirror, the top of a rounded brownish lump crowned by a few strands of cobweb or vegetation or hair? She stared in panic at it, willing it to sink out of sight or at the very least not to move. The match burned down to her finger and thumb, and with a cry she dropped it. As its fall extinguished it she saw the discoloured lump rear up to gaze at her over the edge of the mirror, or rather to show her the lack of its eyes.

  She became aware of crushing the matches to uselessness in her fist. She had to pry it open with her other hand before she could locate another match, and pinch it between her shaky finger and thumb, and jerk it free and scrape it on the progressively bald strip. The room and its shadows wavered up as the flame did, but all she could see was the head of the figure crouched beneath the level of the mirror.

  More of the shrivelled peeling forehead was visible this time. It was waiting for the last instant of light before it raised itself further, Amy recognised, as though it was playing a mad version of some childhood game. What might it do when the matches were spent? She mustn’t risk finding out—mustn’t use her last match. The flame shivered at the thought as her hand did, and although it was no more than halfway down the stalk, gave up. Its failure was the signal for her companion to lift its head, displaying the holes which were the best it could do for eyes and a good deal beneath them, though not much that was worth calling a face.

  Amy dropped the smouldering match and flung herself at the door. Her free hand clutched the knob, and she began to rattle the door in its frame. She didn’t want to infuriate her father now but win him over. ‘Please put the light back on,’ she called. ‘I’m better now. Please let me out or put the light on.’

  Her skin was tingling unpleasantly, and a faint reek of singed carpet had added itself to the increasingly damp smell of the room. Her ears had started to ache along with her forehead and jaw as she strained to hear her father and willed nothing to be audible in her room. ‘Can’t you answer?’ she called, jerking the door harder and fighting to control her voice. ‘You’ve cured me. Can’t you tell I’m cured? I’d just like the light on to see.’

  She was struggling to think of more to say when she heard a sound that had to be welcome—the opening of the door across the hall. The outline of her own door brightened somewhat, and as she tried to take that as a good sign, her father said in a voice which sounded resentful of being roused ‘If you are cured as you say you must know there is nought to fear.’

  ‘I didn’t say I was afraid,’ Amy managed to inform him, though she had trouble with the last word. ‘I can’t see to do anything, that’s all.’

  ‘You have no need to do anything. Comfort yourself with the dark and find peace in it. You ought to recognise you are not alone in it.’

  Somehow Amy kept her voice even, reminding herself that the only way to overcome the presence in her room was by persuading her father, but her body did its best to shake itself away from the threat of being touched in the dark. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘What should I mean? You betray yourself by asking. Is God not with you?’

  ‘Oh, I see. I thought you meant—’ There was no subject Amy would have less liked to pursue. ‘You’re right. You don’t need me to tell you, do you? I know it’s true now,’ she said, gritting her teeth. That failed to relieve her tension, and she couldn’t help thumping the wall beside the door with the side of the fist that held the matches. ‘Oh no,’ she whispered, and before she knew it she had let go of the doorknob and retreated a step into the dark.

  She threw out a hand and found the knob again, and hung onto it while she attempted to convince herself that the wall had felt as it had seemed to feel solely because of her panic. She inched her fist towards it, gripping the matches tight but not too tight, trying to believe in them as a talisman of the light which would show her the room hadn’t changed. None of her preparation was any use. Her knuckles touched the wall, then grated against it as though that would crush her sensations, but there was no mistaking them. Her skin was chafing against bare rough moist brick.

  She pulled her hand away and rubbed it convulsively on her sleeve, and almost relinquished the doorknob in order to light a match. She had a sudden notion that so long as she maintained her grip on the knob she would be holding back the change from overtaking the room, and besides, the matches were a final hope which she didn’t want to exhaust until she absolutely had to, not while there was the slightest chance of coaxing the reaction she needed from her father. ‘I said I’m better,’ she called, trying to concentrate in her voice everything she was desperate to achieve. ‘You have to come and see, or how will you ever know if I am?’

  Her father didn’t respond for some moments—long enough for her to wonder if more of the contents of the mirror than the bricks she’d seen reflected might be with her in the room. Then he said ‘You are clever as the devil, but I see through your ruse.’

  ‘What ruse?’ Only her headache prevented her butting the door in her frustration. ‘I’m telling you the truth. Why won’t you believe me?’

  ‘Because you tell me you have found peace, yet I hear you are as diseased as you were when it was necessary to put you away’

  He was beyond persuasion, she could hear that now. All she had left were the matches, and at once she knew that the best they could show her would be too similar to the nightmare she’d experienced after he had lifted her up to Nazarill—the three necklaces dangling over the mirror, the four hats on the wall, their shadow jerked by fire. He’d lifted her because he was afraid. He’d overcome his fears at her expense, and
that had brought her where she was now.

  Or had he quite overcome them? The contrary idea seemed to crystallise her thoughts into a hardened point aimed straight at him. She gripped the doorknob harder and leaned her forehead against the wood that still belonged to her bedroom. ‘I’m not as nervous as you,’ she said, her lips nearly kissing the door.

  ‘What idiocy are you mumbling? I cannot hear a word.’

  ‘Now you can,’ said Amy, and sharpened her voice. ‘You were scared of this place before we came to live here, and you’re still—’

  ‘Be silent, fiend. I cannot hear you. Your ravings find no purchase in my ears.’

  ‘You can. You’re trying not to. You’re in the place you wanted to forget you’re scared of. You’re in the spider house.’

  ‘Our Father. Our—’

  ‘You won’t be able to blot me out, because you know I’m right. You’re alone out there in the spider house, and you will be unless you let me out.’

  ‘Be still, you wretch, you poison, you betrayal of my flesh. Bow to the Word of God. Our Father Which…Which—’

  ‘Praying won’t make it go away. It’s all around you, can’t you feel it? It’s the spider house that won’t let you pray, not me.’

  ‘Hold your tongue, droppings of your mother. I shall hear none of you. Rave until your voice deserts you. My ears are stopped.’

  ‘Then you won’t be able to hear the spiders coming.’

  ‘You hellspawn,’ her father screamed, and slammed the door across the hall. Amy heard a thud which she guessed was the impact of his knees with the floor, because he began repeating desperately ‘Our Father, Our Father, Our Father—’

  ‘You can still hear me. There’s nowhere in here you won’t be able to. I’m in your head. You can’t get rid of me.’ She no longer knew where her words were coming from, but she sensed they were working. ‘Better not stay alone out there much longer,’ she said.

  ‘Protect me against the wiles of the fiend. Our Father, dear God, Our Father—’

  It was her feeling that a great deal of her panic had been transferred to him which allowed her to let go of the doorknob and, with far less urgency than before, strike a match. The glow spread over the door and illuminated the wall. No bricks were to be seen, only wallpaper. She ventured to touch it, and having confirmed that it felt as it looked, turned to the room. Clouds Like Dreams were in her mirror, and she could see no sign of a figure lurking at the bottom of the sheet of glass.

  Then dim lumps wobbled out from behind her four hats while strings of shadow entangled themselves with the necklaces in the false room beyond the glass, and she remembered her dream of Nazarill on fire. The match flickered out, though she hadn’t extinguished it, and she saw darkness leap into the mirror—for the moment, only darkness. ‘Better let me out before you see them,’ she called. ‘They’re all around you, the spiders in the spider house.’

  At first she thought she was speaking too low, but then she heard her father. ‘Dear God, silence her. Take away her devilish voice.’

  ‘If you don’t let me out they’ll come out. They’re watching to see if you—’

  The door across the hall crashed open, and she sucked in a breath to help her brace herself. She was retreating an arm’s length from her door—she wasn’t prepared to relinquish the knob until he pulled the bolt—when his footsteps dashed into the kitchen and halted. She sensed he was at his wits’ end, ready to open her door if he could think of no other course, and she mustn’t give him a chance to think. ‘They’re coming. They’ll be everywhere you look. They want you to be all alone with nobody to help you. They won’t let you out of here unless I’m with you. Open my door while you can get to it, before they come in the hall.’

  He’d ceased praying. There came a screech of wood on wood as though he’d shoved a bench away from him, having sat on it. She mustn’t be afraid of provoking him further. ‘They’re coming, millions of them, all the spiders in the spider house. I can feel them waiting. They’re giving you one chance to let me out, and if you don’t they’ll—’

  She didn’t know what more she could have said—what nightmare she might have summoned up for him—but there seemed to be no need. While she was speaking she heard him tramp into the hall, and as she ran out of words, he wrenched the bolt back so violently she felt the force of it through the doorknob.

  As the door tottered at her, holding itself almost upright on its single hinge, she released her hold and made to dodge around her father. At once she realised she should first have pulled the door off balance to ensure he couldn’t shut it again, but it was too late for either plan. Her father lunged at her, jabbing a hand into her face.

  She would have thrown herself aside if she hadn’t been momentarily paralysed by the sight of the item in his hand—the large scissors from the drawer whose wooden screech she’d heard. ‘Forgive me,’ he said, but he wasn’t speaking to her; his eyes were blank as death. Perhaps his last prayer had been an attempt to head himself off. Amy opened her mouth to cry for help, forgetting that nobody would hear, and backed away, but he was faster. The scissors plunged into her mouth.

  She felt the blades close on her tongue and, with a considerable effort, meet. She saw them snatch a reddish object from her mouth and shy it into the hall. Her father turned away at once, as if he had no further interest in her, and heaved the door shut after him. He must have observed that all was not right with it, because once he had bolted it he shook it hard. Apparently satisfied, he moved away, and she heard the scissors clatter into the drawer.

  He couldn’t really have used them, she tried to tell herself. Her father couldn’t have done that to her, not her father. But her mouth felt invaded by a wound too big for it, and at the same time robbed of part of itself. The metallic taste of the scissors was intensifying, filling her mouth until she was unable to pretend it wasn’t the taste of blood. It was making her faint, and so was shock, through which the pain had only started to declare itself. When she tried to cry her outrage at her father, nothing came out of her except a choking inarticulate gargle and a mouthful of blood which she heard splash the door.

  She had to see the worst. She shuffled unsteadily around, though her faintness threatened to collapse her legs, until she was facing the mirror. Her hands were clumsy unfamiliar tools she was using in her blindness to locate a match and tear it out of the book. Her sense of the rest of her body had been cut off by the violation of her mouth. She managed to focus in her hands the very little awareness she had to spare, and found the strip on the match-book with a distant finger. The match scraped and caught fire, and she saw herself.

  Her chin and her throat were bearded with liquid which, in the uncertain light, looked black. More than that she couldn’t see across the room, even when she forced her mouth to recall how to open. She held the match in front of her and followed it towards the mirror, her legs wobbling against the bed and only just supporting her. By now the light on the wall at her back was too meagre to show her whether the surface had reverted to naked brick, but she couldn’t see her poster. She seemed to be watching herself as she was led into a cramped dark place by the spectacle of herself, mouth gaping in anticipation of the horror she had yet to experience. She swayed to a halt before the mirror and brought the match close to her face while she tried to poke her tongue out of the hole framed by her bloody teeth. Any muscles that were left in there flinched from the agony which responding would involve, and all she could see in her mouth was blood. The sight released another wave of faintness through her, and the blood spilled from her mouth. It put out the match, and she was overwhelmed by the dark.

  She supposed that was partly her faintness, since she felt herself falling. Most of her struck the bed. Her inability to see made more room for her pain, and her body tried to shrink around it in an effort to squeeze it smaller. Then her limbs and fists and clenched feet relaxed as another gush exploded out of her mouth, and she fainted from loss of blood. In her last moments of consciousn
ess she realised she still had a voice, even if it wasn’t audible to her ears. ‘Let me out,’ she said with it, and knew she no longer meant it for her father. ‘I don’t care what you do to set me free,’ she vowed as she was accepted by the dark.

  27 - The spider house

  There was a problem with the door. As Oswald pulled it shut it began to lean into the room. He had to grab the handle two-handed while the scissors dangled from one thumb. As he heaved the door upright he couldn’t avoid a glimpse of the denizen of the room. Then the door was in place, despite whatever she had sought to do to it, and he rammed the bolt home. When he tried the door it held firm. It was as secure as the rest of Nazarill, and the evil beyond it was silenced at last. He strode into the kitchen to return the scissors to the drawer.

  Though he narrowed his eyes as he shut the implements away, he couldn’t entirely fend off the sight of them. They weren’t as bad as he might have feared—hardly even reddened. He’d done no more than had to be done, and now he should put the unpleasant but necessary incident out of his mind before it drove him as mad as she had made herself. Brooding about it would only corrupt him, weaken him as her wiles had failed to do. Surely his courage in taking up the blade had earned him peace. He clasped his hands together and closed his eyes. ‘Let my mind dwell on You now, O Lord. Let all my thoughts be good.’

  He was able to pray again. She was no longer able to destroy his ability to speak to his maker. He would pray until the memory of the incident was locked away as of no further use. After all, he thought, she had little reason to complain; she had taken pleasure in mutilating the body God had given her. He opened his mouth to raise his voice, and seemed to feel the faintest hint of tickling on his face.

  As his eyes sprang open the sensation retreated, and he clasped his hands until he regained control of his thoughts. Of course, he hadn’t finished cleaning the apartment, and the nerves of his face had been reminding him. Why, there was a disgusting example of slovenliness in the hall—a piece of reddish meat lying on the carpet opposite the bolted room. He tore a wad of paper towel off the roll above the sink and having picked the lump of meat up, not without a shudder, dropped the package in the kitchen bin. The plastic lid clunked shut, allowing him to forget the repulsive contents while he set about searching for anything else she might have scattered about the flat to trouble him.