The House On Nazareth Hill

by Ramsey Campbell

  At the end of the row of houses above the iron-tied wall a path wandered through a thorny sprawl of brambles along the ridge. Generations of churchgoers from the row had tramped it clear, and eventually it led alongside the railings of the churchyard to the gate. Now grass and wild flowers were reclaiming the path, and Rob had to disentangle himself from more than one spiky twig. Elaborate extinguished candelabra of gorse surrounded the path, concealing his approach. Perhaps he would see who kept leaving flowers at the Priestley grave.

  The grave was near the top of the slope that rose to the church. When Rob stepped out of the brambles by the railings, the building obstructed his view. Rather than learn the identity of the mourner, he thought, he would prefer to have this farewell visit to himself. He was halfway along the boundary when the grave came into sight. Shaun Pickles was straightening up from laying a wreath against the headstone.

  Rob was filled with a rage so fierce its glare seemed to reflect off everything he was seeing, and then it subsided. The last place he wanted to fight with his old enemy was at Amy’s grave. He was edging into hiding when a thorny creeper snagged his ankle, and the creak of the mass of vegetation as he tried to free himself drew the guard’s attention to him.

  Pickles’ face stiffened and grew more mottled than ever, its red blotches flaring as the pallor of the rest of it intensified. Then he appeared to control himself, presumably having grasped that Rob wasn’t there to spy on him. ‘I’ll be gone shortly,’ he mumbled.

  No doubt he was embarrassed, but it sounded rather too much like a brusque dismissal. ‘So will I,’ said Rob, and walked to the gate.

  Pickles murmured a few quick words over the grave and crossed himself, then descended the grassy slope. ‘Off on your travels, are you?’ he said with a ponderous humour that was new to Rob.

  ‘My mind is.’

  Pickles twitched his eyebrows but didn’t comment further. ‘I don’t reckon she’d have hung round here much longer either,’ he muttered instead.

  ‘Maybe I’ll do some of the things she would have done.’

  ‘I’d not be surprised,’ Pickles said in a tone designed to convey that he was keeping most of his disapproval to himself. ‘She didn’t think much of us.’

  Rob concluded that he meant the town, since he had turned his gaze on it. He continued to look past Rob while he licked his lips and put his tongue away before declaring ‘I thought I was doing right, you know.’

  Rob’s shoulder was reminding him of its injury, but he did his best to keep it still, because to draw attention to it would distract them from the memory of Amy’s fate. ‘That’s all right, then,’ he said.

  ‘Of course it’s not all bastard right,’ snarled Pickles, slamming the heel of one hand down on top of the gate between himself and Rob. ‘I wasn’t to know about him though, was I? You don’t expect them to be like that when they’re mad. You don’t think they could be so plausible and sly that nobody notices what’s up with them.’

  ‘Some of us had an idea.’

  ‘Aye, well, that must be why you’re off to university and I’m stuck here, because you’re so clever.’ Either he regretted having allowed his bitterness to show or was determined to persuade Rob to his view. ‘My parents never noticed, let me tell you. You couldn’t know what goes on in a mind that’s gone like that. I mean, locking her up, that’s going too far.’

  ‘Just locking her up?’

  ‘He couldn’t have meant to set the place on fire, could he? Not when he knew she wasn’t able to get out. Nobody’s that mad, not Mr Priestley at any rate.’

  Rob had the impression that however sure of himself Pickles was trying to sound, he was close to pleading. Rob didn’t feel he could say much to help, but he tried. ‘I think the fire was waiting to happen.’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean by that. You sound like her.’

  ‘I wish I’d been more like.’

  Pickles blinked at him and returned his attention to the town. After a pause he said ‘My mother thinks Mr Priestley never got over losing his wife.’

  ‘That’d do it, would it?’ Rob said, and was ashamed of his sarcasm. ‘There was more to it. Aim was right, they shouldn’t have moved into that place. Maybe nobody should.’

  ‘Don’t start that up again, nobody wants to hear. We need all the new people we can get. People are business.’ Pickles unlatched the gate as though, Rob thought, he was its keeper, then held onto it while he glanced up the slope at the grave. Rob wasn’t sure if he was meant to hear what the guard said then. ‘I couldn’t ever be like him.’

  ‘Pray you won’t be.’

  Pickles gazed at him to indicate that there were any number of responses he could give. No doubt questioning Rob’s right to advise him to pray was among them. All he said as he opened the gate, however, was ‘I see your arm’s fixed.’

  ‘More or less.’

  ‘Well, there you are,’ Pickles said as though conceding a point, and it wasn’t until he swung his upturned palm towards it that Rob saw he was referring to the grave. ‘Your turn. All yours.’

  Rob stifled his resentment. ‘You’re the one who’s looking after it,’ he said, and dodged clumsily around Pickles to head up the slope.

  He heard the latch click shut. When he reached the foot of the grave he looked over his twinging shoulder. The guard was already out of sight along the main road. Despite his absence, Rob felt no less awkward as he gazed at the wreath leaning against the granite headstone at the end of a rectangle of gravel like a sample of the drive that led to Nazarill. He had no idea how to act or what to say—not because he felt watched, but because he had no sense at all of any presence.

  Amy’s gilded name and dates were concealed by the wreath, but that wasn’t the only reason. How could she be expected to rest with her father? If he hadn’t left so much money to the church Rob wondered whether he would have been allowed into his chosen spot. Perhaps Rob should take his leave of Amy on the moor—and then he asked himself reluctantly if he should visit where she’d died. She’d thought the place was capable of holding onto the dead, and if she’d believed that in her last moments… He wanted to believe it meant nothing, but he hadn’t ventured anywhere near Nazarill since the day after the fire. Now he wanted to be certain it was keeping no secrets about her. He turned away from the stony grave and hurried out of the gate.

  Townsfolk were climbing the streets towards Nazarill. It looked like a ritual, and indeed it was—of going home. None of the people he observed letting themselves into their houses glanced uphill, perhaps preferring to ignore the sight of the windows of Nazarill, every one of which was draped with a pale substance that billowed in the wind.

  Rob tramped past the locked marketplace and stepped onto Nazareth Row. The sign clamped to the left-hand gatepost of Nazarill waved a stiff greeting at him. MAJOR NEW REFURBISHMENT, the sign proclaimed. LUXURY APARTMENTS—ONLY 13 LEFT. The removable numerals shivered as the polythene which filled the windows bulged as though the place had drawn a breath. ‘You’re dead,’ Rob declared, and strode between the stone posts.

  The long facade was pale as ever, having been cleaned by the builders. As Rob stalked up the drive, kicking gravel towards Nazarill, the moors crouched lower behind the roof, leaving the whitish sky, and he felt as though the paleness was trying to insinuate itself into his skull. The blankness of the windows lurched at him again as he reached the threshold and tried the handles of the massive oak doors. Of course the doors were locked, and he paced backwards to stare up at the windows that had been Amy’s.

  None of them had actually belonged to her. Unlike him, she’d had no landscape of her own. He couldn’t bear the notion that the least trace of her might still be imprisoned in the windowless room. Those were her father’s windows Rob was gazing at, and when the polythene in them flapped as the rest did he knew that was only the wind. ‘You aren’t here, I know you aren’t. I hope you’re wherever you’d like to be,’ he said. The wind bore his voice towards the moors, and he wa
s about to move away from the building, whose shadow had begun to lay an insidious chill on him, when he heard something flutter like a wing, although all the blind windows had grown motionless.

  It was on the ground, at the corner of the building which the Priestleys’ apartment had included. As he glanced in that direction he glimpsed movement dodging out of sight—not a cat, he thought, but some less common animal. When he ran around the corner, however, he could see no sign of life—just the wind streaming through the grass and over the top of the hill, and carrying with it a charred scrap of paper.

  As the scrap danced to the crest of the hill he managed to pin it down with his fingertips. It was a fragment of a page from a book of verse, he saw when he turned its blank side over—from the foot of a page, he deduced. It contained just two lines:

  The monks and the rest would have crushed it, you see.

  But the power of the hill shall set us all free.

  That was the extent of the words, but not quite the whole of the message. Beside the last word, and as faded as the print, was an inked cross. It looked very like the one Amy had drawn on the solitary Christmas card she’d sent him.

  Rob gazed at the moors as he folded the scrap carefully and slipped it into his safest pocket. He felt as though he was sharing the landscape with her—the ranks of heather turning into mist as they receded towards the horizon, the hollows secret with shadow, the dusk rediscovering the subtle twilight colours of the moor. He stood there until nightfall, when he imagined her exploring the mysteries of the dark. ‘Goodbye,’ he said into a silence as wide as the moor, ‘and thanks.’ Pressing his hand on his pocket to guard the message, he turned downhill to the world.

  Acknowledgements

  As always, Jenny was there throughout the writing, and Tarn and Matt helped by just existing. Pete and Dana Atkins also know, in Cape Cod, exactly what a writer needs while at work. I’ve always thought that specifying where a book was written has no use other than to make the reader envious, but in case I’m wrong, let me admit that in the process of being penned this novel travelled back and forth from Wallasey to Albufeira, Rome, Cape Cod and straight on to Danvers, and having returned home yet again, went to Manchester and to Swansea. Still, the only place a story is ever really located is inside the author’s head.