Secret Story

by Ramsey Campbell

  “Not guilty,” Trevor informed whoever ought to know.

  Mrs Wimbourne rose up in her booth and stared across the partitions. “Dudley?”

  He kept his shrunken gaze on the screen as if the icons might offer him an inspiration. “Why would I do that?”

  “Precisely what I’d like to know,” she said and marched to the staffroom. He heard a flurry of rustling that put him in mind of a poisoned rat seized by convulsions in its nest, and then her heavy tread closed in on him as her reflection walled off the glass of the booth. Her perfume merged with the acid in his throat as she said “What have you been playing at with my paper?”

  “I offered to buy it from you.”

  “Very well, you may.”

  Her pudgy hand appeared beside his shoulder and came to rest palm upwards on the counter. The fingertips curled, urging him to contribute. How would they wriggle and jerk if he drove a ballpoint into the palm and leaned on it until the metal tip crunched through the flesh all the way to the wood? How might she scream and plead? Far too loudly when there were witnesses; someone or all of them might try to stop him before he was done. He fished out change and counted it onto her hand, but this didn’t rid him of her. Instead she brandished her moneyed fist above his booth. “Lionel, could you get me a paper?”

  As the guard took the money Dudley crouched lower while a cramp jabbed at his guts. Mrs Wimbourne’s reflection looked close to engulfing the sight of Lionel trotting to the newspaper stand and returning with yet another copy of the paper. “Thank you, Lionel. Perhaps now we can establish what all this has been in aid of,” Mrs Wimbourne said as pages rustled above Dudley’s skull. The noises seemed to be pressing his cranium thin, and so did the silence that followed until Mrs Wimbourne’s voice added its weight. “At least your behaviour says it all, Dudley. You know exactly what you have to do.”

  “I don’t know what you’re asking.”

  “I’m afraid if you care about continuing to work here you’re going to have to keep your stories to yourself, and that includes your film.”

  “You can’t tell me to do that. You said you had to ask the bosses at the top.”

  “I need do nothing of the sort. This is my decision and London will support me in it. I presume you have your phone on you as usual.”

  “I might.”

  “For once you may use it here. I want to be able to hear what you say to your American.”

  Dudley seized the edge of the counter to hold his prickly fingers still. “What are you expecting me to?”

  “It’s immaterial how you achieve the result so long as it’s the one that’s required.” She leaned forward as if to ensure he couldn’t escape and moistened the nape of his neck with her breath. “You could explain that you’re undermining our reputation. Anything you do is associated with us now people know it’s you in the papers.”

  He had a sense that she actually fancied she was extending him some help. He considered speaking to Walt in her terms and then calling him to take the nonsense back, but the immediate prospect was so demeaning that his entire body recoiled from it. Either she’d retreated or she hadn’t been as close as his sweaty neck suggested, because the chair failed to knock her down as he thrust it back and swung to confront her. “What kind of a reputation do you think you’ve got?” he demanded.

  “Perhaps you’d care to tell me.”

  “Dull. Unimaginative. Not just you, the whole boring lot of you. If you knew half of what I am none of you would dare to talk to me the way you do. You ought to be proud if you’re associated with me. People might even think you were interesting.”

  “Dear me,” Vera said with a pitying laugh that drew echoes from Colette and Trevor.

  Mrs Wimbourne let her face grow briefly slack to acknowledge their reactions or Dudley’s remarks before she told him “I’m giving you your last chance. Make the call I told you to or you can hand in your notice forthwith.”

  “I won’t bother doing either.” He strode to the flap in the counter and threw it aside with an impact like the shutting of a clapperboard. If his mouth tasted dry and stale, it was from all the triteness he was escaping at last. As he emerged into the sunlight he turned to see Trevor and Vera and Colette exhibited in their glass cases, figures no livelier than the paralysed fan behind them, while Lionel guarded them and Mrs Wimbourne stood over them, folding the newspaper as if tidying Dudley away. None of them seemed quite to believe they were watching him quit, and perhaps they hadn’t all seen the last of him. “Thank you for helping me write,” he called with a grin.

  SEVENTEEN

  “No, no, no . . .” As Dudley’s voice dwindled Kathy had the impression of watching him shrink, become a little boy again. Either he fell silent when he reached the corner of the downhill street or he’d passed beyond her range. He was rejecting her suggestions, not her. Perhaps in time he would decide that some of them made sense, but he didn’t need her to add to the pressure he was suffering. She lingered for a final sight of him on his determined grown-up way to work, and then she turned to find that Brenda Staples had come out of the house next door.

  Despite the heat, she was lagged in a padded pink housecoat that covered her down to her matching slippers. Once she pinched the collar shut around her wrinkled neck, nothing but her veinous hand betrayed how her thin fragile face beneath the dyed black curls was carefully made up. “We didn’t know Dudley was a problem child,” she said.

  Presumably she was also speaking for her older sister. “Nor did I,” Kathy said with some politeness. “What gave you that idea?”

  “Didn’t we just see the end of a tiff?”

  “We don’t expect to agree over everything. Perhaps you and Cynthia do.”

  “Of course if you don’t mind him causing a scene in public we mustn’t be expected to complain. Had he been celebrating?”

  “Not to my knowledge. I’m not sure what he has to celebrate.”

  “Well, quite. Is he ill in some way?”

  Kathy had a disconcerting sense of being quizzed about the excuse she’d proposed to make to his employer. “Which would that be?”

  “Whichever he was being before you came to speak to him. We assumed that was why you had.”

  All at once Kathy was afraid to learn more. How might her persistence have affected his already tense brain? Could the drugs of her youth have found their way into his genes and lain dormant until his mind was at its most vulnerable? Everything around her seemed to grow flat and bright as a sheet of painted tin. “What was he doing?” she heard herself have to ask.

  “Really being quite disgusting,” Brenda said and nodded in the direction of the rockery. “You’ll forgive me if I don’t look.”

  Kathy craned over the weedy tufted rocks and viewed the evidence. Though it dismayed her, it was so preferable to her fears that she had to conceal a relieved smile before turning to her neighbour. “That must have been a bit much. I’ll say sorry for him.”

  Brenda was eyeing the weeds. “I expect he’ll have more time to help you in the garden if he’s giving up his hobby.”

  “I’m afraid he’s very little time for those.”

  “These stories we hear he writes, you wouldn’t call them a job.”

  “I won’t yet. I hope I may be able to. People are only just starting to see what he’s capable of.”

  “I should have thought you’d hope it will all come to nothing.”

  Kathy managed to hold on to her politeness. “What an extraordinary suggestion. Do explain.”

  “Because of the report in the paper.”

  “Why, just because they put a few years on him? That’s the press for you. Either they’re deaf or they can’t read their own writing. I was here when he told them his age.”

  “I was speaking of today’s paper.”

  “I haven’t seen it, I’m afraid,” Kathy said with a twinge of unease.

  “Then I think you should.” Brenda padded purposefully into her house, where she became if anything mor
e audible. “May I take the paper for a few minutes, Cynthia? The paper, Cynthia. The newspaper. The one you have there.”

  “Don’t put yourselves to so much trouble,” Kathy called while she tried to ignore the mute rebuke of the sisters’ trim garden, but Brenda was already marching back to her. She folded the newspaper open before passing it to Kathy across the fence. “I fancy he won’t thank me if he’s kept this from you,” she said.

  “We don’t have a morning paper. I can imagine plenty of bad things that are happening without one,” Kathy said, and then she saw the headline Brenda wanted her to see. As her gaze raced down the uneven steps of the paragraphs, tripping over sentences and the thoughts that lodged against them, she felt as if her mind was toppling into darkness that the sunlit morning had cracked open to reveal. She kept her eyes on the story until the words were reduced to meaninglessness and she’d stowed her emotions out of Brenda’s reach. “I think they’re making far too much out of a coincidence,” she said as she looked up.

  “If you believe that’s all it is.”

  Kathy found she was rolling up the newspaper as if she planned to use it as a club. “What else would you like me to believe?”

  “Nothing, I’m sure, if Dudley says it’s one. Would you mind not doing that to our property?”

  “He does,” Kathy said and let the club uncurl as she handed it back. “He does say.”

  “If a mother can’t take her own son at his word then nothing can be relied on.” Brenda smoothed the newspaper against her flat chest before adding “All the same, being stubborn won’t help anybody’s reputation.”

  “Whose do you think needs helping?”

  Brenda fixed her with a look she plainly thought should be enough of an answer, but spoke. “I hope this neighbourhood isn’t going to acquire one because of all the publicity. I especially hope we aren’t going to be overrun by the press. Well, I mustn’t keep you. Aren’t you usually on your way to work by now?”

  “Not today,” Kathy said and shut herself into her house. The hall seemed gloomier than her having left the unobstructed sunlight behind could account for. At first she thought it was blackened by her anger, but when she closed her eyes in search of calm, that felt like slipping helplessly into her own depths, into a darkness no amount of daylight could relieve, because it consisted of being alone and fearful. Wasn’t she as good as alone if Dudley wouldn’t let her into his secrets? She hadn’t known until the magazine was launched that he had been attacked at work. She’d had to learn from Patricia that his story wasn’t being published and now, unbearably, from Brenda about the film. Surely there was no scope for further revelations, and at least he’d allowed her to glimpse the problem with which he was struggling. That had to be an appeal for help, even if he couldn’t admit it. As soon as she was able to make out the digits she phoned the office.

  Her voice answered, listing the office hours and inviting a message. Mr Taylor had persuaded her to record the tape on the basis that hers was the friendliest voice. “It’s Kathy,” she told her own silence. “I won’t be in today. I’m afraid it looks as if I’ve got a summer bug.”

  She didn’t head straight for Dudley’s room. In the kitchen she gazed at the breakfast he’d left. Sometimes he ate heartily for him; sometimes he would even ask for seconds—now that Kathy thought about it, whenever he’d been visiting his girlfriend. Surely he would if Kathy could make life easier for him. She cleared his plate and hers into the bin and drowned them in the sink before hurrying upstairs.

  As she switched on his computer she wished with all her might that Dudley would have no password. Apparently he trusted her enough not to sneak into his room that he hadn’t bothered with one. She hadn’t time to feel ashamed as she searched for the last document he’d opened, “Put Down for Good”. The experience of reading a new story of Dudley’s before it was even printed made her feel so special that she grinned almost all the way to the end of the first sentence.

  What was he trying to do? Didn’t he realise the magazine could never publish this? Every sentence Kathy read made her more nervous for him. She couldn’t even keep up a wry grin at his naming the woman Mish Mash. Was he so distracted that he thought this would amuse the editor instead of ensuring she rejected the story? But there wasn’t a story to publish. Halfway down the second page it simply trailed off, extending itself in a word that seemed unwilling to end.

  As she stared at the shrill extra letters and the raw red jagged line the spellcheck had etched beneath the elongated word, she remembered how in the months after she’d given up recreational drugs she had sometimes watched words she was reading begin to crawl about the page. They’d looked as desperate to flee as she had been to escape the sight, and each had seemed to aggravate the other, driving her deeper into the chasm of her panic. Could the mental state that had produced the squealing word have anything in common with the one she’d needed tranquillisers to overcome? Surely the word was only a cry of despair at how the story was wasting his time, or perhaps a protest at her interrupting him at work. The entire story must be intended as a protest at the way his work and his reputation were suffering. He was trying to write a deliberately unpublishable tale out of defiance—a story that pretended he based his fiction on real incidents and that let him retort to Shell’s comments about him. Its savagery had startled Kathy, but he must be unable to write a story for the magazine or work on the film until he’d dealt with Shell. Could Kathy help? There was no need for her to change her plan. She reached for the keyboard and deleted the redundant letters from the last word.

  It felt like accepting the biggest dare of her life with no turning back. Of course she could erase everything she wrote, and that allowed her to begin. ing all over him she typed, and read the sentence she’d completed. I expect he feels like someone’s weeing all over him.

  That meant Dudley. It was a gibe he and now Kathy imagined Shell Garridge might have made about him; it was no worse than the remarks with which the magazine had replaced his story. Kathy glared at the rest of the insults Mish Mash had directed at him, and began typing in a fury that only just kept pace with her thoughts.

  Why weren’t the women laughing any more? Some of them seemed to think Mish had stopped being funny. Maybe they could see she was afraid to stop. Unless she kept on joking, her fears would catch up with her. She wanted them to scream with laughter so there was no chance she would scream. She was carrying on about how soaked the man she was insulting would be getting in the rain because really she was afraid she might wet herself with fear. If he was really listening outside she had already gone too far. The knowledge made her rash. All she could do was say the worst she could imagine about men and him in particular to convince herself he wasn’t there.

  Kathy didn’t know when she had last felt so close to her son. She could fancy she was writing out ideas he would have added if he’d had time. She was certain she was sharing his anger at the character he’d invented to help him clear his mind. It didn’t matter how viciously she wrote about someone who didn’t exist and events that had never taken place. All she cared about was her son, and he would be the only reader.

  “I expect he’s got his hand down his trousers if he’s out there,” Mish Mash scoffed, and lots more. Long before she’d finished ranting, most of her audience found reasons to leave. A last loyal pair were lingering over their drinks when she had to bolt for the Ladies’, but when she’d finished getting rid of her ambitious lager intake, only the barman was waiting for her to leave. She wasn’t going to ask him to see her to her car. She would never be so desperate that she had to ask a man for assistance. “Better put a pinnie on if you’re washing up,” she told him as she lowered her head at the rain.

  Her car was hundreds of yards away along the dark promenade. She floundered to it through the storm that was blinding her. Was that a man beckoning her into his clutches? Just a bush the rain was jerking about. Were footsteps tiptoeing rapidly behind her? Just the dripping of a broken drainpipe. By
now Mish could barely see, and

  Kathy was delighted to visualise the woman stumbling soggily onwards, as helpless as any victim who didn’t realise she was in a thriller. She might have been halfway to her car when she heard a whisper close to her, so thin and chill that at first she thought she was making it up out of rain. “Mish, you look a mesh” it said, at least until Kathy deleted the line. “What’s your mission, Mish?” she preferred it to say instead.

  The comedienne twisted around and staggered in a circle as if she was performing slapstick for whoever her audience was. She could see nothing but the rain that filled her eyes. She blinked and rubbed them till she was able to make out the crouching shape of her car. As she fled to it the whisper closed in on her. “You’re in my mesh, Mish.” She glanced wildly over her shoulder, but the storm seemed to have cleared away everybody except her. Was the whisperer hiding behind the car? He sounded too close, which was worse. “Think you’re a fish, Mish? Going for a splash?” All of a sudden a streaming silhouette reared into sight beyond the edge of the promenade as if he had been lying in wait underwater and rushed at Mish. “Have some of thish, Mish,” he shouted,

  hardly worthy of him but the best Kathy could produce as he flung the liquid in the woman’s face.

  It wasn’t acid or even a chemical—too unlikely, despite the temptation. It was merely a bucketful of rainwater. Nevertheless it swept away her vision and almost overbalanced her, so that she needed only a gentle push to send her blundering down the ramp from which Mr Killogram had ambushed her. Before she could regain control the promenade was towering over her and she was up to her waist in the river. She’d managed to back just one unsteady waterlogged pace up the slippery incline when he trod on her scalp.

  The impact or the shock of it cost Mish her footing, and she slithered underwater until a wave broke on her chin and poured into her gasping mouth. The next moment his foot located her cranium again and pushed her all the way under. As he stood on her arms to keep her down he began to sing and eventually, once her hands had abandoned their mimicry of impaled crabs, to dance. “Splish splash, I was taking a bath” he sang until Kathy decided he ought to be singing “Mish mash.” Perhaps that was the last sound the woman ever heard, or perhaps she heard the waves and thought they knew her name.