The House On Nazareth Hill

by Ramsey Campbell

  He was responsible for some of it, he remembered. He’d left the table strewn with her schoolwork. It had been an emblem of his hope that she would come back to herself—perhaps he’d even hoped that it would somehow help her come back—but there was no point in further deluding himself. He gathered up the armful of books and papers and dumped them in the kitchen bin, which just had space for them. The Bible he let lie, because surely its holiness must be equal to any damage it had suffered. ‘You are my strength,’ he murmured to it as he surveyed the room.

  He could see nothing untoward. Apart from the bolted room, he’d brought the vacuum cleaner to bear on every inch of the apartment which could conceivably have required it, after all. He shouldn’t be tempted to repeat the operation so soon; it would suggest an enfeeblement of faith. Instead he went to the window, to gaze at a world which he had forgotten was out there.

  The town was subdued by the afternoon. Beneath a slab of cloud the colour of the gravel drive and as extensive as the sky, the only movement he could see was of several women surmounted by hats, who kept shaking their heads as they made their loquacious way across the marketplace to the tearoom. The red segmented lines of roofs wormed up towards the moor, and he recalled that dozens of those roofs protected a family that was also under his protection. He needed to return to work, and now that he’d dealt with his domestic problem he would, just as soon as he’d caught up on his sleep.

  As he passed the bolted door he heard only blessed silence. She must know better than to start her kicking; she’d been taught not to play any more tricks. Nevertheless he left his door open an inch before lowering himself onto the bed, where he shut his eyes and crossed his hands on his chest. Surely he’d achieved enough to indulge in the luxury of praying himself to sleep.

  ‘Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep…’ He must have been very young when he had last said that, because the remaining words had deserted him—and then it came to him that he’d suppressed them on her behalf. She hadn’t liked them as a young child, when she had been taught the prayer; perhaps this aversion had been the first sign of her ungodliness. If only he had seen that it betrayed her unwillingness to put her faith in God! But brooding over it would be to risk the sin of despair. ‘If I should die before I wake,’ he said, ‘I pray the Lord my soul to take,’ and found he was too weary to frame any more prayers. That felt entirely different from being unable to remember them, and he let his hands relax.

  His eyelids were at least as heavy as his hands, and more difficult to lift. All the same, he forced them open when, on the edge of sleep, he had the impression of hearing a noise, hardly even a whisper, by no means articulate and perhaps not even audible. As his rolling gaze was slowed by what appeared to be a small crack at the bottom of the lower pane, he wondered if it was a draught he’d sensed. If so he couldn’t feel it, and his body was growing more stubbornly ponderous by the second. His mind sank into itself and drew his eyelids down. Just as sleep engulfed him, floating his thoughts apart, he imagined that the softest of kisses touched his lips.

  Whose would he have wanted it to be? Not the infested creature’s—he couldn’t have borne the contact of the unclean mouth that was safely locked in its lair of a room—and so he wished it to have been Heather’s. That was his last thought as he gave himself up to sleep, and he experienced the stirring of a hope that the wish might be transformed into a dream. When one came, however, it wasn’t Heather that it brought to him.

  He was in the same position on the bed. To judge from the sky, not much time had passed. He was lying there, as incapable of conscious movement as anyone asleep would be, when he heard some small presence approaching over the carpet by the bed. His immediate notion was that it might be the magistrate’s cat, which had somehow managed to survive his treatment of it, an encounter which it suddenly seemed crucial for him to take back if he could. Impracticable though the proposal was, it did allow his hand to move, to reach over the edge of the bed to stroke the cat’s head. Then his dream made room for the thought that the animal was unlikely to be in good shape, and he succeeded in retrieving his hand before it could touch or be touched by the visitor. He had returned it to the clasp of his other hand when a series of soft uneven footfalls arrived at the far end of the bed, and a small head wobbled into view against the grey light from the window.

  It wasn’t a cat’s head. It was unclear to Oswald what kind of creature it belonged to, since there was very little of a face to see. He had a confused fancy that the intruder was related in some way to the pictures in the hall; it appeared to be at least as pop-eyed. The globes bulging from its head lacked pupils, however, and were pale as the exterior of Nazarill. In the dream he wondered if it might be someone’s idea of a pet, because it sat on its haunches and jerked its front legs up before its fleshless torso as though to beg. Then it pawed at its eyes that weren’t eyes, and just as he identified them, the cocoons were dislodged from the sockets.

  The many-legged contents of the torn globes spilled over the remnants of a face. He heard a rain of objects strike the carpet as the head ducked out of sight, whitish tatters dangling from its eyeless sockets. He was struggling to regain control of his immovable body—even to be capable of praying for the gift of movement—when the glistening mass swarmed on its countless legs over the end of the bed, as swift as fire on oil.

  All the bulbous bodies wobbling between their spindly scuttling legs were green as mould. He could hear their soft rush towards him, a triumphant whisper; he thought he could smell the poisonous moisture of them. Any of this should be productive of a scream, and if he could only cry out he must waken. Now their weight was gathering on his shoes, and in a moment they were teeming over his ankles and onto his legs beneath his clothes. He forced his mouth open, the whole of him straining to yield a scream. He felt a substance stretching between his lips—the substance whose invisible presence had kept tickling his cheeks and whose accumulation he’d taken for a kiss. The realisation came too late to prevent him from gasping for breath.

  His gasp sucked in more than air. At once his tongue and the interior of his mouth were coated with the substance, and things were crawling over them. Those sensations drove a sound out of him, and not only a sound. With the gurgling cry in a voice he scarcely recognised went the contents of his mouth, or most of them. As his teeth clamped shut to ward off any further invasion, he felt them close on an object that writhed and immediately burst. A despairing shriek prised his jaws apart and sprang his eyes wide, and he was awake.

  His tongue and the roof of his mouth felt thicker than they should, and he seemed unable to rid himself of a poisonous taste. Surely these were effects of his wakening without having slept enough. If the light through the window was exactly that of the dream, that only meant it was somewhat later than when he’d laid himself down on the bed. He ought to pray again—pray as long and as hard as was required to wash away the lingering nightmare. ‘Now I lay me—’ he began with a vigour which he hoped would clean his mouth, but found he would rather not invoke the notion that anything might happen to him while he was helplessly asleep. Some stronger and more positive prayer was needed—one which would persuade him that he was alone in the room, that the bare quilt would stay bare, that there was no cause for him to glance over the edge of the bed. He clasped his hands together so hard that they shuddered, and was about to pray for the faith to close his eyes as an aid to recalling every prayer he knew when something ran across the ceiling to dangle from its legs above his face.

  Oswald flung himself blindly forward and sprawled off the end of the bed. His momentum brought him to the window, and his palms slammed against the glass. If there hadn’t been a crack in it before, there was now—but perhaps he had previously seen the silhouette of a thread of cobweb. As his face almost collided with the pane he saw that the entire length of the bottom of the double glazing was stuffed with white cocoons. The impact of his hands must have jarred them, because the thousands of bodies they
concealed boiled out, a frantic mass that reared level with his face.

  They were trapped within the cracked glass, but for how long? He reeled backwards a couple of steps before he managed to turn away so as to bolt for the hall. As he turned he glimpsed darkness retreating under the bed, and heard the whisper of its rush across the carpet. He dodged wildly away from the bed, and became aware that he was being followed, a body quivering above him like a gob of black poison about to drop. He groaned and fled to the door, but his pursuer easily kept pace with him. It would fall on him as he struggled out of the room, he thought in despair. But the door was still ajar, and in a moment he was past it, and it was slammed, imprisoning all the horrors in his room. Once he’d shaken it to convince himself it wouldn’t open as soon as he let go he dashed along the hall, stretching out a hand to grasp the latch of the door into the corridor. His sense of imminent release was so vivid that he saw what he wanted to see, and was nearly at the end of the hall before he realised that the latch was no longer to be seen.

  It was there, but it was hidden by a thick grey veil at least two feet across. Where the grey surface clung to the doorframe, a brownish shape reminiscent of a baby’s hand appeared to be caught in it. For a moment Oswald was able to imagine the shape was a hand which a child had pulled off her doll, and then it produced the rest of its limbs as it sidled heavily down the web and poised itself over the latch.

  Oswald clapped his hands over his mouth, bruising his lips as he backed away. A terror of stumbling over some unsuspected intruder whirled him round, and he elbowed a picture-frame. The picture began to sway as though its pop-eyed subject was performing an insane dance, and the inhabitants of the nest it had concealed scattered from behind it, scurrying over the panels in every direction. All the bulging eyes resembled cocoons pressed to bursting. As he flinched between the pictures, hugging himself for fear of dislodging them, he hardly knew where he was going or why, even as he lurched into the main room. Then he saw where his instincts were leading him, and sprinting to the window, made his fingers venture to the catch. Nothing appeared to be lurking in it, and he managed to steady his shivering arm while his finger and thumb levered the segment of metal out of its niche. The sash was released, and he heaved it up and hoisted himself over the stone sill.

  The lawn gleamed up at him. Frost which lingered in the shadow of the building had rendered the grass as pale as Nazarill, and he knew that the ground would be unyielding as stone. Though it was less than forty feet below him, he saw at once that he couldn’t jump; at his age he would only smash himself. ‘Help,’ he screamed instead. ‘Someone please help.’

  There was no response. Few people were visible, and they were all enclosed by the windows of shops around the distant marketplace. A second plea, louder and more shrill, had no effect other than to crack his voice. In a fury of hopelessness he dragged the sash down and stared through it at the silenced indifferent streets, and became aware of movement on either side of him.

  The curtains had stirred in a draught as he’d slammed the window, and now they were still. He jerked his open hands at them in an attempt to keep them so. For some seconds they hung inert; then, as he was about to let his hands sink, the heavy velvet shifted—rippled with the life teeming in the material. Both curtains swayed towards him as if they or their denizens were about to overwhelm him. He’d thrust out his hands to beat them off before he realised he would touch not only the velvet but also its contents, giving them the opportunity to swarm onto him. He retreated, flapping his hands, and floundered in the direction of the hall without the least notion of where his panic might be driving him.

  The sight of the Bible lying on its vague reflection halted him. It was the one item in the entire apartment which seemed capable of helping him, yet he’d come close to overlooking it in his terror. He swept it off the table and held it tight, ignoring how softened the covers felt. ‘God be with me. Help me overcome all creeping things,’ he prayed, and advanced into the hall.

  He saw the Bible work at once. The paper eyes were eyes again, and they looked cowed by the book. Whatever might lurk behind the pictures was staying well out of view, and so he marched past them, holding the cross on the front cover towards the bloated object that had crouched over the latch. He thought he’d seen the Bible work—but as its shadow fell on the grey expanse, the creator of the web only twitched the tangled strands and raised its front legs slowly and deliberately as though to acknowledge him.

  Oswald brandished the Bible above his head and struggled to send himself forward. Surely the weight of the book was sufficient to crush the swollen body against the door, or failing that, at least to knock it to the carpet, where it would be stunned enough for him to tread it underfoot—except that he couldn’t bear the possibility of failing to cripple it or of proving unable to finish it off. As his hand waved the Bible, miming his inability to strike, he saw the spider’s moist jaws work; he felt its inhuman attention focus on him, a gaze concentrated by its minuteness. Was the creature preparing to leap off its web at him? He flinched back several feet, further ensnaring himself, and a thought managed to articulate itself. He should indeed be heading for the kitchen. Any spider was afraid of fire, and should be doubly so of the one he would be bearing. ‘A holy flame,’ he declared, both an apology for the action he was proposing and a prayer that it would save him. He ran to the cooker and twisted the nearest control.

  It achieved nothing—not the feeblest hiss of gas. He poked his face at the gas-ring which ought to have responded, and then his head jerked away, so violently he felt his throat stretch. The outlet on the ring was choked by a whitish blob; every ring was plugged with a cocoon. ‘God rot you all,’ he screamed, and twisted every control as far as it would go, and heard a solitary muffled hiss. One of the outlets wasn’t quite blocked, but he couldn’t see which. Before he had time to think, he’d jabbed the ignition button. The left-hand front ring flared up, setting fire to the cocoon. Within the reddish flame small bodies writhed and instantly were lumps of ash.

  The spectacle filled Oswald with a joy indistinguishable from rage. He plunged the topmost corner of the Bible into the ring of fire. The covers only smouldered, but in a few seconds the pages caught fire, slowly enough to reassure him that he wouldn’t need to dash along the hall. He held up the flaming Bible and saw himself reflected in the window, a hero with a sacred weapon, as he reached with his free hand to turn off the lit ring.

  Perhaps it was the heat which brought five legs groping out from behind that control, and as many from behind its neighbour. Oswald managed not to cry out or recoil. He thrust the blazing pages at them, and was heartened to see them flinch. He was loitering to prolong his enjoyment of the sight when it occurred to him that the fire in his hand could ignite the pent-up gas. Shielding the flame to slow its progress into the book, he marched down the hall, past the intimidated pictures. ‘Here comes fire,’ he announced. ‘Here comes death.’

  The guardian of the latch renewed its grasp on the web, and its poisonous balloon of a body twitched up towards Oswald. It looked as though it was offering itself to the flame, and he didn’t hesitate. He shoved the blazing pages into the midst of the cluster of legs, and was almost certain that he saw fire gleam like realisation in the pinpoint eyes. There came a bubbling hiss, dreadfully loud, and the legs splayed themselves in a convulsion. The web shrank in tatters away from the latch, and a lump of fire dropped from it, writhing and shrivelling. By the time the lump struck the floor it was a charred remnant which lay smouldering but still.

  Oswald flicked the rags of web away from the latch with the Bible and glanced about for somewhere to dump the book, which was more than half consumed by now, and threatening to scorch his fingertips. He couldn’t bear the thought of retracing his steps only to relinquish his protection. He tossed the Bible against the skirting-board as his fingers began to sting, and clamped them on the latch. With his other hand he slipped the key into the mortise-lock and twisted it, and used both hands to
haul the door open, and stepped into the corridor.

  The panels were no longer visible, and little of the lighting was. As far as his vision would stretch in the clogged dimness, the walls and the floor and the ceiling were an energetic mass of blackness. His step over the threshold sent the host on the floor scuttling away from him, only to gather itself and rush at him, its countless legs waving, its multitude of bodies quivering. He heard a concerted soft patter filling the corridor as he fell back into the hall and grabbed the Bible. As his fingers closed on the binding, the kitchen exploded.

  The impact hurled him against the door, slamming it. He saw a gust of fire from the cooker cross the kitchen doorway to engulf the table and the benches, all of which burst into flame. He’d kept hold of the Bible, which had left a sample of its flames on the skirting-board. Immediately after the explosion he heard glass shatter, and then the sliding fall of a sash—of the window he’d neglected to secure. A wind surged into the hall, turning the fire of the Bible almost white. Before he could drop the book, the flames leaned towards him and streamed up the whole length of his arm.

  His jacket sleeve and the shirt inside it were a single wad of fuel. When he tried to fling the book away, the cover adhered to his fingers, and he felt as if he was doing his utmost to tear off strips of their smoking flesh. His other hand clutched at the little of the book that wasn’t yet ablaze, but a draught so purposeful it might have been a breath sent flames up that arm too. He had to wipe the Bible down a panel of the wall to part it from the hand it was destroying. The block of fire fell against the skirting-board, but he hadn’t time to extinguish it. Fumbling at the buttons of his jacket with his less injured hand, he staggered around to the door. He couldn’t even bear to look at the fingers which had held the Bible, never mind trying to use them to grasp the latch. Abandoning his struggle with the buttons, he forced those charred fingers to close around the metal knob.