The Searching Dead

by Ramsey Campbell

  “You say we’re the oldest church of all, don’t you, Mr Noble?”

  “I believe I’ve said something of the kind.”

  “Is that why you called it the Trinity Church?” the man said.

  “The three have always been with us. What are they, Tina?”

  “The past and the present and the future.”

  As the woman gave a gasp of awed delight Mr Noble said “They’re the three which are one, the three which have to be made flesh. That’s the oldest truth behind the Bible and the newest too.”

  “You showed us in the windows, didn’t you?” the woman said.

  “So I did,” Mr Noble said, and I realised he meant the stained glass—the woman cradling her baby, the luminous dove. “There’s the infant which is also its own father, and there’s the ghost it already was. Everything is metaphor, a veil over the truth.”

  “I’d like to hear you say more about the Bible,” the man said.

  “Do come to our next meeting. I told you when it is.” As I willed him to repeat the information, Mr Noble said “Or ask me anything you want me to make clear.”

  “I was wondering where you get these ideas from.”

  “A very few of us are able to remember. It’s in our bones, or if you like, our souls. We can reach back through all the memories that made us.”

  “I’m afraid you’ve left me behind, Mr Noble. Can this lady do it too?”

  The woman gave a nervous laugh that was almost blotted out by Tina’s giggle. “I think I’d be scared to,” the woman said.

  “Then can I?”

  “You’d like to see through the Bible, would you?” When the man gave no response that I could hear, Mr Noble said “Let me put you on the path. Do you remember your genesis?”

  “The book of the Bible, you mean.”

  “I wouldn’t expect you to remember your conception. Most people don’t,” Mr Noble said with a laugh not wholly unlike Tina’s giggle. “That’s right, the book.”

  “I think I know it pretty well.”

  “You’ll recall the first parents, then. Adam and Eve, who had to forego knowledge because they were only human, and then they ate the tribute that would bring it to them.”

  “I wouldn’t put it quite like that, but—”

  “Indulge me a moment. God was supposed to have transformed the serpent for sharing knowledge with them, yes? He made it crawl on its belly, isn’t that what the Bible says?”

  Jim was growing impatient with the conversation, and I was afraid he might make some inadvertent sound. Bobby looked intent on the questioning, so that I felt isolated with my sense of an underlying darkness, a furtive presence that might be the essential substance of the church. “I believe that’s so,” the man said.

  “If it was a serpent, wouldn’t it already have been crawling? Why do you think we aren’t told what it was like before?”

  This felt like a threat that too much was unstable and no longer to be trusted, if it ever had been. “I’ve no idea,” the man admitted.

  “See if you can think it out for our next meeting. Or perhaps you can dream it, Mr Wharton. Will you both excuse us now?” Mr Noble’s voice had grown brisk. “Thank you for the tribute, Mrs Richards,” he said. “We’ll look forward to seeing you both next week.”

  I was urging someone to be more specific about the occasion, but all I heard were footsteps returning from the front of the church. Some of them halted uncomfortably close to us, and the man said “Do you hear confessions, Mr Noble?”

  “Why, have you something you’d like to confess?”

  “I’m simply asking why that booth is here.”

  To my dismay I heard him advancing towards us, and almost flinched against Jim. “Like those windows, it was a feature of the church,” Mr Noble said. “We’ve kept them because our follower who did the building work thought it was respectful.”

  “Didn’t you, Mr Noble?”

  The voice and the footsteps were closer, and I stared at Jim as if this could hold him as still as I was striving to remain. “The building was deconsecrated after it was bombed,” Mr Noble said. “Our spirit fills it now.”

  I didn’t think this would satisfy his questioner, and as the footsteps kept coming I held my breath so hard my chest began to throb. “Forgive me, are we keeping you?” the man said, though not as if he cared much.

  “You are rather.”

  “I wouldn’t want to overstay my welcome.” The man’s voice sounded closer than an arm’s length to my back. “I’ll wait for the demonstration,” he said.

  His voice had turned aside at last, but I couldn’t begin to relax until his footsteps moved away, and then I had to muffle the breath I’d expelled in relief. I was afraid it had been all too audible until I heard his footsteps and the woman’s recede along the aisle. The church door shut with a thud and a clank of the latch, and Tina giggled again. “Serpent,” she said.

  “Sir Pent, that’s what they tried to make him. The third person in the garden. The one who could be anything till religion tried to fix him in a shape. The bringer of all truth. His old name was Daoloth if anyone needed a word for him, and they even tried to take that away from him.”

  I saw Jim press his lips together as if he had to lock an angry outburst in. “They’re afraid of anything that’s too big for their minds,” Mr Noble said, “but we aren’t, are we? Let’s take the new one down.”

  We heard them moving away from the altar, and then a key turned in a lock. “Let your father go first,” Mr Noble said. “I know you want to see.” A door laboured open, dragging across the stone floor, and their footsteps began to descend. I’d counted more than a dozen when Jim muttered “Better get out while we can.”

  “We mightn’t have time,” Bobby whispered. “I’m staying here.”

  “Quiet,” I murmured urgently. “Listen.

  Our voices had obscured the sound I was straining to hear. It had greeted Mr Noble as his footfalls stopped descending—a vast soft surreptitious restlessness. I thought the noise had resembled a feeble chorus, however vague and wordless. Now there was nothing to hear except a distant thud like the one the woman had made by planting her tribute on the altar. After that came a silence that could have been respectful or watchful or otherwise significant in a way I mightn’t even have wanted to grasp, and then Tina giggled. “Good night,” she said like a secret joke. “Sleep well.”

  “They never sleep, Tina,” Mr Noble said, “but they dream.”

  Jim and I stared at each other while Bobby gazed at us through the confessional mesh. I heard a faint click at the foot of the steps, and realised I’d failed to notice it earlier—the sound of a light switch. Tina scampered up the steps while her father followed more deliberately, locking the door and shaking it to confirm it was secure. “Home now,” he said. “We don’t want Mrs Noble drawing more attention to us, do we?”

  “When will we come back?”

  “Soon enough, I promise.” He seemed a little disconcerted by her eagerness. “Give them time to gather from the dark,” he said.

  We listened as the two of them left the church. The pushchair receded with a faint squeak of wheels, and as soon as the noise grew inaudible Bobby stepped out of the booth. I fumbled the other door open, and Jim lurched out after me. “God,” he said, an imprecation I would never have expected him to use. “I know you said, but I didn’t realise he was teaching her that stuff. Something’s got to be done.”

  He strode past the altar as if he didn’t believe it was anything like one, and shook the door in the right-hand corner of the walls more vigorously than Mr Noble had. I was afraid of what he might disturb, not having overheard it as I was sure I had, but apart from the rattling of the locked door there was silence. “What do you think they were talking about down there?” Bobby said.

  “Some rubbish he believes,” Jim said before I could speak. “All that matters is he’s putting it in her head. Shouldn’t her mother know?”

  “We ought to tell her
, you mean.”

  “She’d be on our side. I don’t know who else would.”

  I saw that Jim didn’t think too much of the idea now that it had been made specific. I wasn’t anxious to linger while we talked, because the empty almost unadorned church felt more than ever like a shell concealing a presence I preferred not to imagine. “We’ll need to watch for people coming here,” I said. “If we know what they do at their services we’ll have more to tell.”

  I wasn’t sure how workable the plan was, but I was growing desperate to leave the church. Unless the sky outside had turned cloudier, I could have fancied that darkness was seeping up from beneath the church to enfeeble the light within. I hurried to ease the door open, struggling to hush its sounds, and we lingered in the porch until we were certain Tina and her father were nowhere to be seen or heard. As we crossed the weedy desolation I glanced back. I was tempted to draw Jim’s attention to the detail that had caught my eye, but I didn’t want to risk provoking disagreement now that he was committed to dealing with Mr Noble. Even if I’d reminded him about the field in France, he mightn’t have found the resemblance as significant as I did—the way that all around the building the weeds crouched almost flat, as though they were striving to grow away from the church.

  24 - Lies

  That Sunday the priest warned us about false prophets. Scientists had invented bombs that could destroy the world, and now they’d dreamed up an idea that was destroying some people’s faith in God. However big a bang they came up with, they wouldn’t blow God away, and Father Kelly paused to await an appreciative laugh, though not too much mirth. However impermanent the world might seem, this should remind us God was constant—only God. Let the scientists try to shape the future in their own image as much as they liked, but they were going to learn that it belonged to God. They were false prophets masquerading as authorities, and the faithful needed to beware of them. We should always remember how knowledge had led to every sin in the world, and by this point I’d begun to doubt everything the priest said. That was the end of his sermon, and eventually the mass finished too, though not before I’d taken communion alongside my parents at the altar rail. I felt hypocritical, even if I was joining in so that my unbelief wouldn’t distress them, and the wafer had never seemed so scrawny and desiccated in my mouth. Its faint oddly undefinable taste lingered as the congregation thanked God for releasing us, and was still on my tongue when we emerged from the church.

  Miniature rainbows gleamed in beads of dew on the grass in the small churchyard. Misty sunlight laid a soft glow on the eroded headstones, where the etched messages put me in mind of telegrams from the past. My parents exchanged a few polite words with Father Kelly in the porch, and we were almost at the gates when I saw Jim and his parents waiting beyond them.

  Jim looked too embarrassed to meet my eyes, and I had a sense that his parents’ composure had grown ponderous, turning them into obstacles that blocked our way out of the gates. “Can we have a word?” Mr Bailey murmured.

  “Have as many as you like,” my father said. “No charge.”

  “Shall we walk along a little first?” Mrs Bailey suggested.

  Though it was plain that they didn’t want to be overheard, my mother said “Are we going anywhere in particular?”

  “Home to ours if you like.”

  I wondered if they meant to postpone discussion until then. Our route was leading us towards the railway bridge where Mr Noble’s father had been run down by the tram, and a stale taste of the wafer returned to my mouth. We hadn’t reached the bridge when the Baileys must have noticed we were alone on the pavement. “Do you know where these two and their friend were yesterday?” Mr Bailey said.

  “At the flicks,” my father said. “Weren’t you, Dominic?”

  I was mumbling confirmation when Mrs Bailey said “As well as there, Kevin means.”

  Before I could reply beyond opening my mouth Mr Bailey said “They went to another church.”

  My parents halted in unison to stare at me. “What church?” my father demanded.

  There seemed to be no point in mumbling. “The new one Mr Noble built,” I said and gazed at Jim.

  He looked at me, but not for long. “I thought they ought to know what it was like.”

  “We’d have liked to be told as well,” my mother said. “So is someone going to?”

  My hot face made it clear that she meant me. “It isn’t like a church,” I said.

  “It looks like it’s pretending it’s one,” Jim said.

  My father wasn’t satisfied with the answers or with us. “What is it like, then?”

  “It doesn’t feel holy.”

  “I’m asking Dominic.”

  “It feels dead,” I told my parents and tried to be more specific. “As dead as a graveyard but like it’s pretending not to be alive.”

  “You aren’t writing one of your stories now.” My father frowned at me. “Maybe that’s the trouble,” he said. “You think you’re in one.”

  “I don’t, dad. We all know it’s real. We wanted to see if Mr Noble takes his little girl to the church.”

  “Why’s that any of your business?” my father objected as my mother said “Did he?”

  “Yes, and he’s telling her things like he told Mrs Norris. Maybe worse.”

  “He’s telling her he knows better than the Bible,” Jim said.

  We were heading for the bridge again, and the wafery taste was back in my mouth. “And how did you manage to hear all that?” Mr Bailey said.

  “We just did.”

  “I don’t like you spying.” Mr Bailey had lowered his voice, but not so that the rest of us couldn’t hear. “That isn’t how this family behaves,” he said.

  “Dominic’s father is right,” Mrs Bailey said. “You’re acting as if you think you’re in one of those stories of his.”

  While I didn’t know how fiercely Jim might refute the accusation, I was provoked to interrupt “Doesn’t anybody care about the little girl?”

  “Certainly we do.” Before I could respond to my mother she added “But it’s not your place to ask. Just remember who the parents are.”

  “See you do.” Having given my face time to grow hotter still, my father said “And maybe you can try and realise the police cared, and they took her back to him.”

  “Maybe,” Jim protested, “they didn’t know about his church.”

  “What difference do you think that would make?” Mr Bailey retorted. “We don’t like all the nonsense he believes, but it’s not against the law.”

  “Even if it should be,” my father said.

  “We don’t live in that kind of country, do we, Desmond? I didn’t think we lived in one where people spy on people either.”

  “Our homes are still supposed to be our castles,” Mrs Bailey said.

  “As far as we’re concerned it’s past time you left this Noble fellow alone,” Mr Bailey said, and the bridge muttered in agreement. “If you can’t stay away from him, stay away from each other.”

  “Which is it going to be?” my mother said as if she was trying to outdo him for severity.

  I felt devious and in danger of being exposed while I said “We’ll do what you’re making us do.”

  “It’s for your own good,” Mrs Bailey said. “Forget about anyone else’s. We know you mean well.”

  Her husband wasn’t too patient with this. “Jim?” he said like a warning.

  “Mum’s right. Honestly, we did.”

  Mr Bailey scowled with the whole of his face. “I’m asking how you’re going to behave.”

  “Like Dom said.”

  Although I couldn’t tell whether Jim had understood my ruse, I was afraid he’d given it away until his father said “No need to let him do your talking for you. You’re a bit too influenced by him.”

  “I’m not, dad,” Jim complained. “I was after Mr Noble because I’ve seen what he’s like.”

  “Don’t talk to your father like that,” Mrs Bailey said. �
�You’re both too obsessed with that man, you and Dominic. Just try to remember he’s nothing to do with you any more. He’s been dealt with.”

  I saw Jim was as provoked to argue as I was, but neither of us did. At least my slyness appeared to have been overlooked, and nobody spoke again until we were passing Bobby’s road. “We’ll be having a word with your friend’s parents,” Mr Bailey promised, which followed us in silence all the way to the Bailey house. “Will you come in for a cuppa?” Mrs Bailey said as if she thought or hoped life had reverted to normal.

  “Will you excuse us if we don’t just now?” my mother said. “I think we’ll be taking this one home.”

  As soon as the Baileys’ front door shut behind them she said “Dominic, can’t we trust you any more at all?”

  “What do you mean, mum?”

  “I think you know.” My father seemed less angry than disappointed, which I felt was worse. “It started with this Noble fellow and his book.”

  “Dad, I never—”

  “We don’t want to hear it.” He was closer to anger now. “You took something that didn’t belong to you,” he said. “That isn’t how we brought you up.”

  “It’s all to do with this Mr Noble of yours. It’s as if he’s turning you as bad as him.”

  “Mum, I’m not. How can you say—”

  “You’re letting us think half the truth. They should have told you at your school that’s as bad as lying.”

  My face blazed, but I had to ask “Half of what, mum?”

  “You told us you were going to the pictures,” my father said with angry weariness, “when all the time you were going to that church as well.”

  “So in future,” my mother said, “you can say exactly where you’re going before we let you go.”

  “If we do.”

  “All right,” I mumbled, knowing I would have to be more of a liar than ever: even my answer was a lie.