The Searching Dead

by Ramsey Campbell

  We were at dinner, and my mother had relented, even if it came with an unspoken warning not to argue. She’d given me the second biggest lamb chop and kept the smallest for herself. No doubt she would have said I needed feeding to help me grow up, but it felt like an apology for her having been unreasonable earlier. It let me risk saying “But he’s the one who made the church.”

  “If he’s made it up it oughtn’t to last long.”

  “Don’t you think he could fool people? You met him.”

  “I told you before, Dominic,” my mother said. “If the people there can’t see through him that shows them up for what they are.”

  “It’s not their fault,” I pleaded, “is it, mum?”

  “Just pray God shows them the right road,” my father said and applied himself to chewing a mouthful of his chop.

  I was tempted to tell my parents everything about Mr Noble that I’d kept from them, but they would just have been dismayed that I’d grown so credulous if not dangerously deluded. Perhaps I could have shown them my copy of his journal, but what would this have achieved beyond demonstrating how devious I was? My father’s last remark had sounded as unanswerable as the final words of a sermon. He and my mother had made up their minds, and I hardly needed to ask Jim or Bobby if their parents had. I did need to learn if my friends had been visited by anything unwelcome, not to mention dead, but they hadn’t even dreamed they had.

  Did this mean I’d been singled out for visiting? I was afraid our failure to make our parents intervene might bring Mr Noble’s father back in whatever shape he’d taken. I lay awake for nights, fearing that my very fears about him might attract him. When he repeatedly neglected to put in any kind of an appearance I managed to start catching up on my sleep, if only to stop my mother scrutinising my face for signs of insomnia every day at breakfast. More than once a dog wakened me in the night, but I managed to convince myself that the barking didn’t herald Mr Noble’s father, and was able to take refuge in sleep.

  I have to admit that from feeling pitifully grateful to be spared any nocturnal visits I began growing less concerned about Mr Noble’s church. Perhaps my parents were right, and once its members realised they were being used it would destroy itself. Meanwhile I had distractions in my life, and Mr Askew’s comments weren’t the least of them. He’d kept his word about my story, returning it to me the next day. “So, Sheldrake,” he said, tapping the cover with a swarthy nicotined forefinger. “I see you’ve been reading trash.”

  My face grew so hot that it made my lips awkwardly stiff. “Which, sir?”

  “The wretched Wheatley. Christian doesn’t always mean worthwhile, you know, not when it comes to the arts. Find yourself Charles Williams if you want to see that kind of thing done at a higher level. Or if you’re ready for more realistic hire, search out Graham Greene.”

  This seemed sufficiently encouraging to let me blurt “Was the story any good, sir?”

  “I believe it shows promise.” Mr Askew grimaced, but only at his leg as he took a step away from my desk. “Study better models,” he said, “and you’ll improve as a writer.”

  His words took their time over making themselves felt, but when Jim and I encountered Bobby on our way home I couldn’t help announcing “Our form master says I might be a writer.”

  “We already knew you were,” Bobby said and halted on the corner of her road. “Why’d he say?”

  “I gave him my new story to read.”

  “Can we see?”

  I feigned reluctance, which was how I thought a writer would behave, while extracting the book from my satchel. I opened it at the tale and handed it to Bobby, who took hold of it so delicately that she might have thought it was as fragile as my feelings. As she began to read, Jim glanced at the page and away. “You’re still writing about us.”

  I heard the objection he didn’t need to make clearer. “Maybe I’ll stop,” I said, “when I’ve read the writers Mr Askew said I ought to read.”

  “You don’t have to stop for me,” Bobby said.

  I saw Jim decide not to start an argument. “See ya round,” he said like someone in a film I couldn’t place.

  “See ya tomorrow,” I called after him.

  Bobby was too engrossed in my tale to contribute. When she turned the book towards the nearest streetlamp to catch more of the misty light I said “Do you want to take it home?”

  “We don’t want it getting wet, do we?” Bobby said and shut the book to place it with some care in her schoolbag. “It’s good. I’ll bring it back tomorrow.”

  I was belatedly aware that we were alone together. I felt awkward enough to flee and yet eager to prolong the togetherness. Having fumbled for some words, I let loose the first that came to mind. “Have you heard about the film about the girls’ school, what’s it called, St Trinian’s?”

  “Some of my friends went. They said it’s tops.”

  “So do you want to go and see it sometime?”

  “We can on Saturday if it’s on. Maybe there’s a cowie on with it somewhere so Jim won’t feel done out of a film.”

  It wasn’t long since he’d decided only Westerns were worth watching, or at least films with guns in. Bobby had given me the best cue to speak that I was likely to get, but my words felt like a lump that was clogging my mouth, and my face had grown painfully hot before I managed to dislodge any of them. “I meant,” I mumbled, “what I mean, I mean shall just us two go so he won’t think we’ve made him?”

  Bobby faced me, and the streetlight glinted in her eyes. “Are you asking me out, Dom?”

  “Er.” I followed this with “I mean, if you like.”

  “I don’t, then.”

  I didn’t realise how much of me had been clenched around hoping for a different answer until I felt how hollow I’d become. “Right,” I said, and with even less conviction “Okay.”

  “Don’t you want us to stay friends, Dom?”

  I grew conscious that Miss Mottram was watching me between booklets in the window of her knitting shop near the streetlamp. “I didn’t say I didn’t,” I said with little sense of how this sounded, or concern about it either.

  “If we try and be more we might end up not even that. I know girls it’s happened to.”

  The clutter of my emotions didn’t let me see the sense of this. “See you when I see you,” I said in a bid to flee.

  I hadn’t turned away when she reached into her schoolbag. “Do you want this back?”

  “I wasn’t giving it you to keep.”

  “No,” Bobby said as if I’d threatened to retrieve more than the book, “do you want it now?”

  This felt far too close to ending our friendship. “You can have it till you’ve read it,” I mumbled, “if you still want.”

  I must have been infecting her with clumsiness. Miss Mottram watched us turn our awkward backs on each other without finding any more words. Once Bobby was out of sight I tramped home too fast to think, even of how I might look to my mother. I’d eased the front door shut and was sneaking upstairs, hoping not to be accosted, when she came into the hall. “Dominic, what’s the matter now?”

  I could only voice the thought that came to my rescue. “Mr Askew says I ought to read different books.”

  “Well, I’m sure your teacher must know best. You try doing as he says.”

  I escaped up the stairs to begin my homework, and by dinnertime I was able to pretend all was well. That night, however, thoughts of Bobby—quite a few of which would have earned Brother Treanor’s wrath—rather than of unwelcome visitors made it hard for me to sleep. I didn’t see her in the morning, and on my way home I couldn’t decide whether I was hoping to meet her or the opposite. She was waiting on her corner with her schoolbag in her arms, and produced my book at once. “It was good,” she said and immediately made for home.

  Jim blinked at me. “Have you two had a fight?”

  “Ask her,” I said and instantly panicked. “No, don’t say anything, all right? We just had a bit o
f an argument. It wasn’t about you.”

  Another blink left his eyes narrow. “Why’s it going to be about me?”

  “I’m saying it wasn’t. That’s why you needn’t ask.”

  He was plainly less than satisfied, but I wasn’t going to explain. I’d alienated both my closest friends, and I didn’t know what to do. At least by next morning he appeared to have forgotten our exchange, unless he was somehow biding his time, but Bobby was another matter. If my parents had an argument while I wasn’t there I could always tell by how they behaved afterwards, treating each other so politely that it made the house feel starved of air. Now Bobby and I were acting like that, and Jim didn’t help. As we set about planning our Saturday, which felt more like an obligation now, Bobby’s dutiful enthusiasm and my token zeal provoked him to demand “What’s up with you two?”

  “It was nothing. It’s been sorted,” Bobby said. “Just be here tomorrow.” It was Friday evening, in our usual place for meetings and farewells, beneath the streetlamp on the corner of her road. Jim and I were back there well before noon, the time we’d all agreed. I think it was Jim who first looked at his wristwatch, whose face boasted more dials than my watch did. By ten past twelve we were competing at timekeeping, and Jim said “We’d better see what’s kept her.”

  I wasn’t sure I wanted to find out, but I trailed after him. Mrs Parkin opened the front door, a slab of oak with a lion-headed knocker and ambitions to confer seniority on the house. “Isn’t Bobby coming to the film?” Jim said.

  Mrs Parkin frowned and spoke low. “Not this week.”

  “Why,” Jim said while I sensed that he was avoiding my eyes, “what’s…”

  “Nothing boys should talk about.” Mrs Parkin’s scowl might almost have been weighing her voice down. “Or know about either,” she said.

  Jim’s face turned practically as red as mine must have. “Sorry,” he mumbled. “Didn’t know.”

  “Tell her,” I blurted, “we hope she gets well soon.”

  This was a bid to regain Bobby’s friendship, but her mother’s unrelenting frown suggested it was inappropriate. “Make sure you don’t mention it when you see her,” Mrs Parkin muttered and shut the door.

  I felt close to disloyal for going to the film. Having seen from the list of cinemas that occupied an entire column on the expansive front page of the Echo that the giant ants had flown to the Essoldo cinema opposite the Coop in London Road, we’d determined to bluff our way in. The girl in the pay box gave us searching looks but took our half-crowns for a seat each in the circle. Though the ants looked a little like colossal soft toys to me, the idea of giant toys on the rampage was disturbing enough, especially since the film began with a little girl whose mind was damaged by what she’d seen. I couldn’t help thinking of Tina Noble, which brought me back to Bobby and how she’d formed an almost maternal or certainly sisterly bond with the toddler. It felt as though too much in my life was eager to converge, though I could never have foreseen how it would.

  On Monday Bobby was back at school. When we met her on the main road I tried not to imagine what she was feeling like, however fanciful my version would have been. “How was your film?” she said.

  “It was fab,” Jim said. “We’ll see it again if you like, won’t we, Dom?”

  As I agreed so vigorously it might have sounded fake, Bobby said “I’ll see how I feel at the weekend.”

  This reminded Jim and me what we were forbidden to discuss, and it seemed to infect with wariness anything we said to her. That was how it felt to me until the middle of the week, when I had to tell her and Jim “I can’t come out on Saturday.”

  “Why, what’s wrong with you?” As Bobby stared at Jim he attempted to take back his stress on the last word by saying “What’s wrong with you now?”

  “The school nurse’s sent me to the dentist.” In a sally at bravado I said “Just some fillings.”

  “You poor bastard,” Jim said, another of the words we’d begun to use when adults couldn’t hear.

  “I’ve had one,” Bobby said and pointed at a greyish lump embedded in a back tooth. “Nothing to cry about.”

  “I won’t be crying,” I retorted and saw her thinking I’d rebuffed the bluff sympathy she’d meant to offer. I didn’t understand girls, especially her now she was growing more like one. “We don’t cry,” I said in case she could take this as including her, but I couldn’t tell whether she did, and she hadn’t much else to say before she made for home.

  I thought of her when I was in the dentist’s chair, and it didn’t help at all. Either she’d been trying to lend me some bravery or her dentist was considerably gentler. Mine was a Polish Catholic who blamed the end of sweet rationing for the state of children’s teeth and apparently regarded treatment as a penance for the patient. No doubt he believed toothache was sent by God. The first time the hook he was using to pluck at my teeth dug into a nerve, I fought to think of Bobby’s words in case they could blot out some of the pain, and when they failed I gave myself up to praying. That didn’t work either. Even before it touched me I thought the drill sounded like agony refined to a penetrating squeal, and when the bit set about piercing my tooth, no amount of supplicating God prevented it from finding a nerve. I squeezed my eyes shut and strained helplessly to concentrate on the prayers my gaping mouth was unable to pronounce, but Jesus didn’t intervene to protect or anaesthetise the nerve, and Mary didn’t even deal with the sweat that was breaking out all over me as I dug my nails into the arms of the chair. I suppose the session lasted less than half an hour, but the virtually unrelenting pain rendered time endless. I felt I was learning what hell might be like, and if anything of the sort was the result of believing in sin, I’d had enough of religion. God shouldn’t let anybody like the dentist get away with his behaviour, especially since I was sure the man thought it was somehow justified by the crucifix that I saw on the wall whenever my eyes winced open in the hope that the drill wasn’t coming back, I was already on the way to leaving behind the beliefs I’d been taught, and now I could see no reason to keep hold of any of them.

  I was growing more convinced of this as I trudged home when I met Jim and Bobby on the main road. “What was the film like?” I said as best I could with my aching jaw.

  “Just as good,” Jim said, and Bobby confirmed “It was gear.”

  The pain in my face gave my jealousy a keener edge. Even if they’d been keeping up our Saturday tradition in my absence, Bobby had gone to the cinema with Jim although she wouldn’t just with me. I was close to confronting both of them when Bobby said “Were you all right at the dentist?”

  “Why shouldn’t I be?” Since this persuaded them no more than me, I found the strongest word I could risk uttering. “It was a sod.”

  “Oh, Dom,” Bobby said as if we’d never had our disagreement. “What was it like?”

  “What do you think? It hurt a lot. Hurt like a bugger.”

  “You mean the needle did.”

  “He never gave me one.”

  “Well, he ought to have. You should have asked. You want to tell your mum and dad or he’ll keep getting away with it. My dad says too many of the wrong people have got too much power.”

  “Telling about Nobbly didn’t fix him, did it?” Jim said.

  Though I would have liked to take my pains home, I couldn’t miss the chance to say “Then it’s up to us again.”

  “We can’t do anything if our mums and dads won’t help.”

  This sounded like the ignominious end of the Tremendous Three, an admission that we weren’t really any use. As I wondered if it was even worth discussing—all at once our little gang seemed as ineffectual as religion—Bobby said “Like my mum says, it’s up to the people at his church.”

  Pain lanced my jaw, and I no longer felt like arguing. “I’m going home,” I said and did so without waiting for Jim.

  For a change my parents didn’t immediately greet me as I let myself in. Perhaps they didn’t want to seem too anxious. I was
attempting to compose my face when my mother came out of the kitchen. “Dominic, was it that bad?”

  My father appeared from the front room, flapping the evening paper. “Have an omelette then, son. You can whip it if you like.”

  He’d recently been demonstrating a new device at Cooper’s, a plastic plunger with a porous disc for a head, which would turn an egg in a tall glass into the makings of an omelette if you pushed it up and down vigorously enough. The action took my mind off my aches to an extent, not least because it couldn’t help recalling an activity I’d begun to practice in the bathroom. My mother cooked the omelette, which left me ravenous for more, but I didn’t like to ask. After dinner I stayed up until Variety Playhouse on the radio was over—comedians, pianists, women singing arias, a chorus performing an Italian favourite—and then my mother said “You take that face to bed, Dominic. Shall we give him a Phensic?”

  “It won’t hurt a big lad like him.” As if this was insufficient compensation for my woes, my father said “We can all have a walk in the park tomorrow.”

  Just then I didn’t care much what we did. Once I was in bed the throbbing of my jaw drove away any night fears, and when the painkiller eventually took hold I fell into an exhausted sleep. In the morning the dental aftermath had subsided to a dull ache that breakfast didn’t aggravate. The ache accompanied me to church, where it felt not much worse than tedium. “Ite, missa est,” the priest said at long last, and when everyone responded “Deo gratias” I did so with enthusiasm. I felt close to having made a sly joke, thanking God that the mass was finally over. It was only what everyone else said, and I had no sense that God minded one way or the other.

  I couldn’t think God cared how we dressed either, but we kept our respectful togs on for the park. The October afternoon was recalling summer with a blaze of sunshine, and the leaves on every tree glowed like mosaics made of shades of amber. At the end of a polite muted stroll suitable for Sunday we sat on a bench opposite the playground, where a few small children were sending cries of pleasure up to the uncomplicated sky. Now I wonder if my parents were sharing silent memories of when I was young enough to be pushed on a swing, but that Sunday I was put in mind of Tina Noble and her nervous mother. I remembered the toddler demanding to be sent higher than the sky, a memory that invoked the darkness masked by the unbroken blue expanse. I was finding other thoughts, whatever they may have been, when my mother nudged my father. “Don’t look.”