Incarnate

by Ramsey Campbell

  The giant face of the Fun House leered across the fairground as if it were ready to laugh its mechanical laugh and roll its mechanical eyes. Doreen and Harry had looked after her when she had needed it most and now, when Doreen needed her, she wouldn’t go. Doreen had written again yesterday, pleading with her at least to come for Christmas. If only it were just her company that Doreen yearned for! But she’d seen at the funeral what Doreen wanted of her. and she couldn’t, not anymore. She’d dreamed of Timothy after his death, she’d dreamed of her parents after they had died in their beds halfway through the war, but she’d had nobody to dream of since then. In a way she had been grateful for that, even before Oxford; it had once occurred to her that people had to die before she could dream of them. Now even the thought of it made her insides feel loaded with ice.

  The wind almost overbalanced her as she reached the end of the fairground wall. It shoved her round the corner, toward Central Drive and her rooms. She mustn’t go to London, not when she felt like this: Doreen’s yearning would be too much for her, even if Doreen never spoke of it; just being there would make her feel she had to dream of Harry. What did Doreen expect him to say? The dead never had much to say for themselves, even in dreams— just that everything was fine and nobody should worry about them, they would all be together again one day, though Freda had always felt on waking that they’d told her much more that she had forgotten, that she would have to wait to learn. Couldn’t she tell Doreen she had dreamed of Harry, that he was happy and wanted Doreen to be? Certainly she would write to Doreen as often as she could, phone her every day, perhaps.

  She was past the far side of the fairground now, and entering the complex of streets that led back to the promenade. You couldn’t get lost, not with the Tower to guide you. She would call Doreen as soon as she got to her rooms, tell her that she couldn’t take time off before Christmas or after, she was needed at the store. It wouldn’t be worth going to London for just the Christmas break. In fact Tess could take over the department for her, she had done so last summer, but it wasn’t really fair to ask her, and besides, Freda had made up her mind. And all at once she realized that she was as afraid of London as of dreaming.

  She halted at a crossroads. Terraces led away from her in all directions. Unbroken rows of houses opened straight onto the pavements—homes or shops or guest houses. There was nobody in sight, hardly a window was lit, and she couldn’t see the Tower. Why was she afraid to go to London? She wasn’t going, she didn’t need to know, but not knowing made her nervous. It made her feel as if some hidden part of her mind was lying in wait for her.

  She was hurrying in the direction where she felt the Tower should be. None of the streets seemed to be parallel to any other, and the smudgy black sky wouldn’t help her locate the Tower. A dog barked in an unlit house, a cat lay on a butcher’s counter, an empty front room was lit only by the bars of an electric fire. She wanted to be in her rooms, where she might be able to think.

  She wasn’t expecting to see the promenade, but there it was suddenly, at the far side of a crossroads. The tide must be rising, for the glittering fringe of a wave fluttered above the edge of the promenade before it was torn away by the wind. She made for the promenade at once. That would show her the way home.

  The street beyond the crossroads was dark except for one dim lamp. She had to peer at the uneven pavement as she walked. A paving stone tilted like a Fun House floor as she stepped on it, and she thought of the giant face with the rolling eyes. She would be safer walking on the road. She stepped onto it just at the edge of the pool of light. Something gleamed beyond the lamp, and she glanced up.

  A sign over a door said “SAGE.” At first she thought it was illuminated from within; then she saw that it was gilded, though it managed to seem brighter than the lamp. Notices covered the window beside the door: “SAGE KNOWS YOUR FUTURE,” one said. She had stepped forward to read the small print when she realized that what had looked like a black door was an unlit corridor, and there was a light at the end. She noticed nothing else, for she’d realized where she was. She had tried to find this place eleven years ago.

  She’d come back from Oxford desperate to know her future—to know that eventually her panic would end. A friend of her landlady had told her where to find a psychic who was supposed never to be wrong, but Freda had lost her way in the dark side streets—these streets. Perhaps her need for help was even greater now, since it had brought her here at last.

  She stepped into the corridor at once. Suddenly she needed to trust someone else’s insights., though she wished the corridor weren’t so dark. When a board gave way underfoot and she reached out to steady herself, the wall felt like damp chalk. But here was the end of the corridor, here was the light beyond a doorway. She stood gazing.

  The light, whose source she couldn’t distinguish, was made to shine straight down on a table and two chairs; the rest of the room was in darkness. A man with an oval face so calm that it looked like a sculpture was sitting at the far side of the table. Presumably he was Sage. She was beginning to regret having wandered in, to scoff at herself— Sage knows his onions, she thought wildly—when he said, “Please come in.”

  His voice was soft and gentle. It made her think of a calm, moonlit sea. He stood up. He was taller than she was. Timothy had been; for the first time in years she didn’t feel the need to stoop. He was reaching out to her with his long fingers, white and smooth as marble, like his face. Either he was bald or he had the highest forehead she had ever seen. She stepped forward to the black table, and then she felt as if she were falling into a well. The top of the table was a black mirror, though she couldn’t see him in it, nor herself. If she fell she would never stop.

  His hands caught hers across the table. His fingers were as cool as they had looked. She thought of her mother’s cool fingers, stroking her forehead when she’d had a fever.

  His hands and hers were reflected in the mirror now—it must have been a trick of the light that had made her unable to see them before—and she had an impression of restrained strength, of a deep calm that could be hers. “Will you sit down?” he said. “I can help.”

  She was scarcely aware of sitting down, since his face stayed level with hers all the way. She wondered what the smell was that reminded her of fallen plaster, she wondered how large the room was—and then she was aware only of him. When she made to speak, he shook his head and smiled. “You need tell me nothing,” he said.

  She had no idea how long he gazed into her eyes. She felt oddly that he was gazing down into the mirror as well. Peace seemed to be flowing into her through his fingers, which were still holding hers. At last he said. “You are troubled because someone else is.”

  “Yes.”

  “She has lost someone dear.”

  “Yes,” she said, and felt as if she didn’t need to speak, that her secrets were passing to him through her fingertips in exchange for peace.

  “She is unable to accept the death because it seems so pointless.”

  She hadn’t thought of that, but it must be true, not only because Doreen and Harry had been planning their second honeymoon, to see a few of the places they had always felt they couldn’t afford, but because Harry’s death had been so unnecessary. It seemed impossible that he could have lost his way in the streets near the boardinghouse, that he could have been so preoccupied that he had stepped in front of a lorry. “Yes,” she said, since the man called Sage appeared to be waiting.

  “She would accept it if she heard of him.”

  “I suppose so.”

  “You can do so, you want to, but you are afraid.”

  Could he read all her secrets? Yes, she wanted to, but the idea terrified her. She felt like a blind person who was horribly afraid to see. Even his peace couldn’t reassure her now; she was afraid where it might lead.

  He must have sensed that she couldn’t speak. “There is nothing to fear,” he said. “You can help her. Only you can.”

  If that was true, she
didn’t want to know. It wasn’t only dreaming that she feared, it was going to London. Could she invite Doreen to stay with her for Christmas? But then she might have to dream. “I can’t,” she pleaded. “I’m afraid of where she lives. I can’t go there, I don’t know why.”

  A frown passed across his forehead, a single ripple. “Perhaps you have painful memories.”

  Of course she had. Timothy had come from London. He’d worked at Harrod’s and all over London there were places that would remind her of him. She was struggling within herself, for the man called Sage was robbing her of all her reasons not to go to Doreen, making her afraid that she would have to go. Suddenly the dark around her seemed as limitless as the dark in the mirror. Just as she thought of pulling her hands free of his, he took hold of them more firmly and looked down into the mirror. He gazed and gripped her hands until she had to look down too, however afraid she was. Down there in the dark, so distant that she couldn’t understand how she could make it out, was Harry’s face.

  She would have fled, if the man called Sage hadn’t been holding her. His peace was flooding her, washing away her panic, and she saw that Harry’s face was luminous; Harry’s eyes were gazing into hers, telling her something beyond words, something of what she had always forgotten when she woke from her dreams. The light that was his face was growing brighter; every feature was microscopically perfect, made of light that was still brightening, until she had to close her eyes.

  She didn’t know how long she sat there, blinded. If the long cool fingers hadn’t kept hold of hers, she felt she would have been lost forever in the dark. When she opened her eyes, Harry’s face had gone. She gazed at the man called Sage. “You see what you can do,” he said. “You must not waste that. Few have your vision.”

  She felt drained, almost weightless, but no longer afraid. The vision of Harry’s face was an aspect of the peace that had washed away her fear, and she wished she could see it again. “Will you help your friend now?” he said.

  She said “Yes” without thinking, from deep in her peace. But had she been coaxed into giving a promise that she would be unable to break? How would she feel when she went away from him into the dark? “Can I come and see you again?” she said, trying not to be nervous.

  “I think you will find there is no need. I shall be moving on. I’ve finished here. There is no reason for you to be afraid,” he said, and paused. “Should you ever need me, perhaps you will see me again.”

  She realized that was a dismissal, and she let go of his hands and stood up. In the unlit corridor she looked back. He raised one hand in a gesture of farewell and of promise, too, she hoped.

  She felt peaceful, if she would let herself do so. She didn’t even realize she was walking away from the promenade until suddenly she found herself in sight of the locked entrance of the Tower, almost home. She let herself into her rooms and made for the phone, clapping her hands to chase Grimalkin away from her knitting, which he’d pawed out of the basket, and back to his cat food. This time she wouldn’t try to know better than the advice she had been given. Why had she been afraid to go to London? If there was one thing she could be sure of, it was that she was unable to predict her own future.

  She dialed quickly and waited while the phone rang and rang, until she began to grow anxious for Doreen. Then there was silence. “Hello?” Doreen said.

  She sounded hopeless, lifeless, unconvinced that the phone was worth answering. “It’s Freddy, Doreen,” Freda said at once, seeing Harry’s luminous face and the eyes of the man called Sage, wondering if the vision had come from those eyes rather than from the dark mirror. It didn’t matter, the vision was part of her now, if only she could communicate it to Doreen. She must communicate that peace. “I’m coming to stay with you for Christmas,” she said. “Keep your chin up until I get there. You won’t be alone much longer.”

  12

  THE YOUNG WOMAN who played the victim of the corporal punishment film couldn’t get a university place or a job. Martin interviewed her while the film was being made, since he was given so little time. By no means all of the corporal punishment was simulated. Terry Mace grew furious when the woman directing the film, who was a partner in a firm of solicitors whose office was disguised as a headmaster’s study that Sunday, refused to talk to Martin for the camera.

  “About time you stopped chasing awards and got back to making films you care about,” he said afterward to Martin, and Molly knew she must get Martin on his own to find out what had really been troubling him.

  At Kensington High Street baskets of flowers like vegetable spiders hung under the roof of the station arcade, beneath the frosted glass that the afternoon sky turned to gold. Martin Wallace lived opposite, in a turn-of-the-century block of mansion flats white as china. As they went up in the lift, a cage of polished bars and mirrors, Molly saw the buttons for the servants’ bells next to each door, brass sockets gleaming. His apartment was on the top floor, six rooms with a bell push in every one, antique furniture as elaborate as the plaster vegetation that sprouted all the lights, a four-poster bed in the bedroom. “VIP treatment from MTV,” Martin said as if he didn’t know what else to say. “I just hope I’m worth it.”

  “You know you are.”

  “With your help, maybe.” He hurried across the densely carpeted hall and opened the outer door. “Come up and see the view.”

  He pushed the bar on the door at the top of the last flight of stairs and they stepped onto the roof. The cold was exhilarating. They made their way between the skylights and the craning insect aerials to the edge. A silenced crowd streamed homeward along Kensington High Street, and the muted brass of traffic drifted up. The rooftops were a different city—weathercocks dozing for the moment among the turrets and highbrow windows and rooftop greenhouses; flags stirring among the shrubbery of a roof garden. Beyond the sunset roofs, Chelsea looked carved out Of amber. A breeze lifted a hint of bells from the spire of St. Mary Abbot’s. Molly gazed down at the coping stones above the apartment windows. “They look as if you could just step down to the street,” she said, and suddenly she was swaying at the edge of the roof, flailing her arms. Martin grabbed her shoulder. “Nearly lost you there,” he said.

  She was squeezing his waist as if she would never let go. Her grip seemed to mean paragraphs she couldn’t speak: I want you to know what I am, I don’t want to be alone with it, I would tell you except I’m afraid that would bring it all back, don’t let go, don’t say anything… . Then he turned and kissed her. They kissed hungrily, and quite a time passed before they thought to move back. Then they were on the stairs, in the flat and the bedroom. They undressed mutually and urgently and made love so fiercely that the four-poster canopy shook.

  Afterward they lay embracing. His penis was quite small, she noticed now. He grinned at it as if it were an oddity he was rather fond of and told her about the girls it had taken aback: Marsha at high school who’d held it and complained, “Is that all you’ve got?” as if it were a donation to a charity, Sharon who’d seemed to regard it as the best you could expect at a Baptist university. Molly laughed, and they made love again, more gently, and she knew that if she told anyone it would be Martin, but not now. She felt so safe, drifting away into the evening dark, going to sleep in his arms… . Suddenly she jerked awake: she might dream if she fell asleep now—she might dream of him. It made her panic. She groped for the light switch and her clothes.

  He’d promised her dinner but she didn’t feel up to it now. Eventually, to his amusement, she managed to persuade him to go down and get her a Big Mac. As soon as she’d eaten the hamburger out of its squeaky container, she wiped her mouth and kissed him. “You don’t mind if I go now, do you? I’ve things to do at home.”

  “Sure.” But he seemed disappointed. “Go ahead.”

  “it isn’t true, I haven’t. I just don’t want to sleep here tonight, all right?”

  He smiled wistfully and took her face in his hands. “I understand.”

  In the
frosty High Street a car drove over a McDonald’s carton that crunched like ice. Plaques glittered on houses in Holland Street, where the ladies in waiting at Kensington Palace had lived two hundred years ago. Smells of cooking hung around Queen Elizabeth College, a peacock cried sleepily in Holland Park. She went quickly down the steps to her flat, trying not to feel disappointed by knowing nobody was there.

  She’d taken a shower and made herself coffee before she remembered Martin’s TV interview. Had he been hoping she might watch it with him? There he was now, talking to Leon about his work with a kind of shy self-questioning enthusiasm. She wondered if he were watching by himself or if he would be too embarrassed. Had she simply been afraid that if she dreamed she would have to tell him? She switched off the television and went to bed, hoping to sleep.

  Soon the dark began to shift and whisper, but that was only rain; she heard the splash of a passing car, imagined rain flooding down her steps. The rain was outside, her flat wasn’t underwater. That was just a momentary dream, like the pimply face that was on the pillow when she turned over, the face of the man who’d followed her in Soho, the face that pressed into hers whenever she closed her eyes. She floundered out of bed away from it, the blankets clinging to her then floating away through the room, she swam to the door and dragged at it, but the weight of the water that filled the room was too much for her. If her parents were out there they must have drowned by now, but the thought drifted away into dreamless sleep.