The Searching Dead

by Ramsey Campbell

  “I don’t like cowie serials so much any more.”

  She came to the door of the kitchen to give me a wistful look, and a soapy smell of Omo followed her. “I expect you’re growing up, Dominic.”

  In that case it entailed letting her think the three of us had been at the cinema. On a scale of seriousness the deception scarcely merited a mark, and I no longer thought it was a sin, but I still felt guilty for tricking my parents. I spent the afternoon in my room, reading tales based on the three laws of robotics. The number seemed to figure a good deal in my life, and next day at church I was aware how it kept occurring in the prayers and hymns—indeed, how it underlay the entire ritual. Mr Noble referred to this in his journal—“the rite which is older than humanity and which the Bible seeks to veil, both in the myth of the three persons and in its fable of the garden, though the allegory hints how man descends from the trinity who performed the ceremony of the tree, the couple and their sire born of light and chaos”—but I was still wary of recalling this while I was in church, where it felt too close to blasphemous.

  Jim was waiting for me outside the porch. “Ready,” he said as if we were playing hide and seek, unless it was a question.

  His mother seemed to speak for all our parents. “Where are you two running off to again?”

  “Just meeting Bobby,” I said.

  “Maybe you should both go home first.”

  Just then anything unexplained felt ominous. “Why?” Jim said before I could.

  “To get changed,” my mother said as though nobody should need to be told.

  “Maybe the lads want her to see them in their Sunday best,” my father said with a wink at Jim’s.

  Jim’s father had other concerns on his mind. “Where does she go on Sundays, then?”

  Jim and I risked a glance at each other, which didn’t help us to respond. When we made our confusion plain his father said “I’m asking you which church.”

  “We don’t know,” Jim said as I tried saying “We never talk about it.”

  “Maybe you should.” Jim’s father frowned at us while he said “Don’t go picking up any ideas of her dad’s.”

  “Dad,” Jim protested. “We know they’re rubbish.”

  “Just so you do,” my father said to both of us.

  I could have done without Jim speaking for me, especially since I wasn’t sure that I wholly agreed with him, but I mustn’t argue right now. “Jim said,” I said.

  We were so relieved to escape that we almost made straight for the graveyard. Instead I headed down our road and under the railway bridge. Reflected clouds stirred in the uncurtained dusty windows of the Norris house, and I tried not to be reminded of a presence groping for a shape. Beyond the graveyard arch we tramped across the grass alongside the wall by the railway line. As we reached the expanse of lawn that the main road bordered we saw Bobby crouching at the hedge opposite the Noble house.

  We were picking our way between the graves when she glanced back at us. She shook her outstretched hands in our direction and then jerked them at the house before using them to indicate that we should hunch low if not hide. I took her to mean that we might be too visible from the house, and thought of dodging from tree to tree, but much of the space between the hedge and us offered only headstones for cover. Instead I ran towards the nearest section of the hedge, belatedly slowing down to a walk in case this was less conspicuous. I saw no need to crouch by the hedge, and walked swiftly to Bobby with Jim at my back. “Didn’t you see what I told you?” she demanded as soon as we were close enough for her to whisper. “Someone’s watching.”

  “Who?” I said as Jim said “Where?”

  “Up at the window. Don’t let them see.”

  By now we were doing our best to improve on her crouch. Through the hedge I saw a curtain at the upstairs window subside into place, closing a gap. “I think they’ve gone,” I muttered. “Maybe they didn’t spot us.”

  We were straightening up when the front door opened to reveal Mr Noble’s father. He leaned on his stick while he eased the door shut, and then he limped at speed out of the garden gate. Though a car was approaching, he clattered his stick against the kerb and lurched off the pavement towards us. The car slowed with a screech of brakes, but he ignored it while he limped across the road. “Who’s in there?” he demanded fiercely though not loud.

  Jim retreated from the hedge at once, halting to stare at Bobby and me. “What are you waiting for?”

  “It’s only Mr Noble’s dad,” I hissed. “Maybe he knows where the church is.

  “Think he’s going to tell us?”

  “He might. I don’t think he likes it much.”

  “But won’t he tell Mr Noble he saw us?” Bobby murmured.

  “She’s right. Is that what you want, Dom?”

  “No,” I admitted and turned away from the hedge, beyond which Mr Noble was calling “Who is it? I know you’re there.” I would have led a dash across the grass, but there were people in the graveyard. “Come on, then,” I urged, “only don’t run.”

  Perhaps we were too concerned with staying inconspicuous. We weren’t even halfway to anywhere to hide when I heard the peremptory rap of a stick on a path. “Don’t bother trying to run off,” Mr Noble’s father shouted. “I saw you.”

  Several people who were tending graves stared at us. He’d made us sound like criminals, and my face blazed with the unfairness. Why were we fleeing? Given how he’d treated his son’s journal, mustn’t the old man be as uneasy about him as I was? “Wait,” I mumbled as I swung around. “Let’s see if we can talk to him.”

  He was limping fast along the path from the gate to head us off. At every other step his stick clacked on the compacted gravel. With its loose lips drooping low his flat squarish snub-nosed face might have been striving to look even less like his son’s. When I crossed the grass to meet him Jim and Bobby followed me with rather less enthusiasm. As we reached the path he peered hard at Jim and me. “Where do I know you from?”

  “You talked to our school about the war,” I said. “You told us about the place in France Mr Noble took us to.”

  The old man swayed as if I’d robbed him of balance. “Which place?”

  “The field where you thought somebody was waiting to be dug up.”

  He gripped his stick with both hands for support. “You’re telling me he took you boys there?”

  “We went past it,” Jim said. “We stayed near.”

  I nearly rounded on him. I’d hoped dismay might prompt the old man to reveal more about his son, but now I had to say “He went there by himself one night. We saw him.”

  His father’s mouth shrank inwards as though he wished he needn’t speak. “How close did you go?”

  “We were on the road that goes past.” As the old man’s mouth relaxed to an extent I said “He looked like he was digging something up.”

  “God help us, I knew it.”

  He hardly seemed to be speaking to any of us or even seeing us. “What do you think he was doing?” I said.

  “I need to sit down.” The old man stared around him until he located a bench beside a nearby path, “Come along if you want,” he said, not very much like an invitation, and made for the bench with a series of raps of his stick.

  Jim and Bobby glanced at me as we trailed after him, but there was no opportunity for discussion. He sank onto the bench, which was smudged with faint shade by the doggedly evergreen foliage of a tree at his back. “Room for some of you,” he said once he’d finished leaning on his stick. “Room for the young lady at least.”

  “I’m all right,” Bobby said and stayed with me and Jim.

  “Do as you like. That’s what you all do these days.” The old man looked sufficiently offended to have finished speaking, and when he relented we didn’t gain much. “I don’t want to talk about that place any more,” he said. “Just be thankful you didn’t go too close.”

  Frustration made me reckless. “Has it got something to do with his ch
urch?”

  The old man clasped his shaky hands around the stick, which gave a faint nervous rattle on the path. “What do you know about the church?”

  “A lady told my mum about it. She was at the spiritualist one when Mr Noble was. The lady, not my mum.”

  “She’s a spiritualist,” Jim contributed, “but she thinks this new one ought to be shut down.”

  For a breath that I found hard to take I thought he’d said too much, and then Mr Noble said “She’s not wrong there.”

  “Where is it, then?” Bobby said.

  “You shouldn’t go anywhere near it. None of you, ever.”

  “Why, what’s the matter with it?”

  “It’s just a front for what he’s planning.” The old man stared not so much at us as through. “You don’t need to know any more,” he said. “If I can’t stop him, you’ve no chance.”

  “Our dads could, though,” Jim said, and as Bobby glared at him “Our mums as well.”’

  The old man’s gaze focused on us but seemed to find no reassurance. “Why should they?”

  “They got Mr Noble fired from our school.”

  “It was them, was it?” Without betraying how he felt about it Mr Noble’s father said “What for?”

  “For things he was saying that weren’t Christian. And Dom, that’s him, he found Mr Noble’s book and gave it to our teacher.”

  If I’d known Jim meant to say this I would have done my best to stop him. It wasn’t a subject I wanted to address, especially since I didn’t see how it could help, but I didn’t manage to hush Bobby either. “Why did you hide it?” she asked Mr Noble’s father.

  “You’d wonder why I bothered. It doesn’t want to be got rid of, that thing.” Not much less despairingly he said “I didn’t want it making anybody else like him.”

  However little of an explanation this was, I didn’t feel eager for more. “So do you want us to tell our parents?” I said.

  “I don’t suppose it can hurt if they spread the right word. Maybe more people can do more than me.” The old man squeezed his eyes shut, gathering wrinkles around them, and closed his hands together on the stick as if he were about to pray. “It’s in Joseph Street off Kensington,” he said. “I just hope they’ll be quick.”

  “Why,” Bobby said, “what’s going to happen?”

  “Pray you never find out.” More to himself the old man said “I don’t know how much time I’ve got. I won’t have him using me after I’m gone.”

  While Jim was as reluctant to speak as I felt, Bobby said “How do you mean?”

  The old man’s eyes fluttered open as though the right lid had to overcome a droop. He might have been wakening to the situation, because he gave us all a searching look that plainly failed to satisfy him. “Well,” he said, “are you going to tell your parents?”

  My answer wasn’t quite a lie. “We’ll see what they say.”

  “Come on, then,” Jim said, catching the spirit of the deception. “I expect they’ll be at home.”

  We were turning away from the bench when Mr Noble’s father said “You don’t know what to tell them. I haven’t told you enough.”

  Bobby grabbed Jim’s arm and mine, having swung around. “Tell us now, then.”

  “No,” the old man said, levering himself to his feet. “I’ll tell them.”

  For a number of reasons this struck me as inadvisable. “We can,” I said. “We’ll make them see.”

  “They need someone to show them how serious it is. Just take me to them.”

  “We aren’t going home yet,” Jim said at once.

  “I thought you told me you were. Yes,” the old man said as if the effort to remember enraged him as much our deceitfulness, “I know you did.”

  “Come on, you two,” Bobby said and turned her back on him. “We’ve got to be somewhere else.”

  “Don’t you walk away from me while I’m talking,” the old man said louder. “Just you wait for me.”

  We could only ignore him. We were making to retrace our route when I muttered “Don’t go straight home or he might see.”

  We veered towards the allotments, not quite running. I felt as if the clacks of the stick on the path were driving us onwards. “Don’t try and run away from me,” the old man shouted. “I’ll find you, don’t you fear.”

  Most of the people at the graves were watching us now. Some of them gestured as though we needed our attention drawn to our pursuer. Bobby pointed at her head and twirled her finger, a mime that didn’t seem to please them. They were the reason we were trying to appear guiltless by not breaking into a run, though I was more afraid that Jim’s parents and mine might hear the old man’s shouts and look for the cause. When we reached the gates the rapid clatter of the stick was still keeping pace with us. “Don’t go home yet,” I muttered. “Let’s not stay on this side of the road.”

  The main road was deserted except for the occasional passing car. All the shops were closed on Sunday, and most of the local folk would be at home or in the park, where I was more than wishing we’d gone instead of rousing Mr Noble’s father. As we ran across the tram tracks in the middle of the carriageway I heard the stick rap the pavement and then the tarmac of the road. “I’m still here,” Mr Noble’s father shouted. “You won’t get away from me.”

  We trooped along the pavement on the far side of the road, still miming innocence for the benefit of anyone who might be watching. The determined clatter of the stick was following us along the middle of the road, beside the tracks. How far did Mr Noble’s father mean to chase us? Wouldn’t he ever grow tired? I’d begun to feel desperate to bring the pursuit to an end, and then I saw the railway bridge that crossed the road ahead. “Let’s go round the bridge,” I urged. “Maybe we can lose him.”

  The insistent knocking of the stick gathered speed while we hurried to the arch. The bridge greeted us with a wide-mouthed squeal of metal as a tram swung around a bend ahead. We were almost at the bridge when I heard a cry of rage behind us. I thought Mr Noble’s father had realised the tram might hide us from him, but his stick had lodged in a tram track, and he was struggling to free it. “Come out,” he snarled.

  The tram sped under the bridge, and a spark turned the stonework a hellish red. The old man stared at the oncoming vehicle but didn’t relinquish the stick. He looked as if he thought his infirmity meant the tram had to give way to him. We might have dashed to save him—all three of us started towards him, not even watching out for traffic—but the tram was already closer to him than we were. “Get out of the way,” I yelled.

  “Leave it,” Jim shouted.

  “Let it go,” Bobby begged loudest of all.

  We were all shouting at once, and I never knew how much the old man might have heard. “My wife gave it to me,” he protested, turning away to throw his weight into a last yank at the stick.

  His words were almost blotted out by an agonised screech of brakes. As the stick jerked free, he staggered sideways. One foot caught the track, and he fell face up across the path of the tram. Jim and I shared the same unspoken instinct. While I suspect we would never have looked away if we’d been on our own, we spun Bobby around and turned our own backs on the old man’s fate. We couldn’t avoid hearing, and the sound of the wheels had never reminded me so much of a bacon slicer. Did I hear another piercing noise amid the shriek of brakes? It fell silent before they did.

  Once there was silence except for the cries of passengers I risked glancing over my shoulder. I still wish I never had. I looked away at once, shaken by a convulsion that made Bobby squeeze my arm. Mr Noble’s father was in far too many pieces behind the tram, but I wasn’t sure whether the bulk of him had just finished twitching like a decapitated chicken—a bird shorn of its entire head, not just the upper half.

  20 - Visitors

  That night was the next time I saw Mr Noble’s father. My mother had urged me to go to bed early, since despite witnessing the old man’s death I’d insisted that I didn’t need to see the doct
or. A large mug of Horlicks was designed to help me sleep. To my surprise it must have, since the clamour of my fears and other thoughts eventually subsided and left me alone, abruptly unaware of the dark.

  I didn’t know how soon I heard the barking. The dog was somewhere in the distance, and at once I hoped there would be no closer sound. When a second animal began to yap I did my best to think it was at least as far away, but once a third dog joined in I couldn’t pretend that they weren’t increasingly nearer. Did they have to mean that something was on its way to my house? While I dreaded finding out, waiting to learn might be worse. Though the bedclothes seemed eager to keep me where I was, I struggled free and stumbled to the window.

  Clouds like faded skeins of the October moon patched the black sky. Though the moon wasn’t quite full, it appeared to have grown brighter to compensate, driving all the stars into the far dark. It blanched the grass in the cemetery, which looked as if the earth were sprouting slivers of stone. Or perhaps the headstones were draining the grass of colour if not life to aid their own kind of growth. I found I was thinking all this to avoid looking for activity in the graveyard, where the shadows beneath the trees seemed unnecessarily black. With a good deal of reluctance I grasped the edges of the table and leaned closer to the window, and glimpsed movement within a shadow on a path.

  Before I could retreat, having decided that I really didn’t want to see, Mr Noble’s father emerged into the dead light. Although he was limping—indeed, lurching as if he no longer quite knew how to use his legs—he didn’t have his stick. Apparently he needed both hands to keep hold of whatever headgear he was wearing, even though the night was windless. Then I saw what I was desperate to avoid seeing: that he wasn’t wearing a hat after all. The item he was trying to hold in place was the upper section of his head, and now it slipped askew. It was sliced diagonally, and I watched the fleshy corner that contained the left eye slide down the cheek and off the head. I couldn’t entirely choke back a scream, but although it wasn’t much of a sound it made the intruder in the graveyard aware of me. One hand clutched at the scalp and lifted the portion of the head, extending it in my direction like a ghastly lantern kindled by the moonlight. Its solitary eye blinked at me, and behind it the rest of the head opened its mouth. “Dominic,” it said, “help me,” and as the figure hitched itself towards me at a speed that suggested it needed to keep up with the section of the head it was brandishing by the hair, I did my utmost to let go of the table and shove myself back from the window. I couldn’t move, and so I put a dismaying amount of energy into a feeble scream.