Dead Letters Anthology (15 page)

I raised the flashlight beam with a good deal of reluctance. The grime on the table scurried away from the light, or shadows did, and came not quite to rest on a pair of objects on the far side of the table. Surely they were just a pair of artificial hands, broken off a statue if not sculpted in that fashion. I couldn’t identify the material, since they were caked with grime. In fact they appeared to be at least partly composed of it, and it wasn’t as tranquil as it ought to have been. It was shifting almost imperceptibly, which put me in mind of a multitude of insects hatching or otherwise coming to life.

I tried to blame this on the shaky flashlight. The spectacle was so disagreeably fascinating that it distracted me from a movement I should have noticed sooner. Almost too gradually for it to be evident, the hands were creeping across the table towards the cards – towards me. Before I could prevent myself I jerked up the flashlight beam.

What did I see? Not much for long, but far too much. The hands belonged to a shape that occupied all the space on a solitary dilapidated chair. Like the hands, the shape appeared to owe its substance to the grime that was everywhere in the dark. Perhaps the soft insidious sound I heard was demonstrating how restless that substance was, but I had the awful idea that it could be an attempt to breathe. I just had time to glimpse a face – eyes as black and unstable as the rest of the lopsided bulk, nostrils desperately dilating, lips that sagged into a helpless grimace and then struggled to produce another expression if not to speak – before the figure collapsed.

The hands stayed on the table. I could have thought they’d been severed for a crime. I don’t know whether they continued to move, but the rest of the presence did. Beyond the table I heard a soft dismayingly widespread mass start to crawl across the floor towards me. In the midst of this I thought I heard another sound or a variation on the same one, as if the crawler had begun to regain something like a voice. I didn’t wait to make sure. I fled so fast that the corridor appeared to be caving in as the flashlight beam reeled from wall to wall, and I had the nightmare notion that the hotel might indeed give way around me, trapping me with its denizen. By the time I staggered into the lobby I couldn’t tell how fast the soft dogged sounds behind me were, or how close. As I dashed towards the way out of the hotel I risked sending the flashlight beam into the corridor, and thought I glimpsed a disintegrating figure heave itself up to summon me back.

I ran to the car and drove away, not slowing for the overgrown road. The car still bears scratches from the hedge. I didn’t stop until I reached the nearest motorway services, where I spent so long washing my hands that several people stared at me. I always keep a bottle of antiseptic gel in the car, but it was used up by the time I arrived home. Besides the crawling sensation of grime on my skin I took with me the word I’d seemed to hear in the abandoned hotel. “Cheat,” the voice might have whispered as its source recovered some shape.

Perhaps the speaker meant the accusation for himself, in which case the admission may have brought closure, but I fear it was aimed at me. If neglecting to acknowledge my debt was how I cheated, haven’t I repaid the debt now? Or perhaps my career has been the cheat, in which case this account disguised as fiction is the latest proof. Writing it has left me feeling grimy, desperate to clean myself up, and I only hope it hasn’t invited anything out of my past, let alone given it more substance. Surely reading it can’t make you in any way complicit. I hope you and any other readers won’t feel the need to wash your hands now that you’ve finished it, Conrad.

The
Oxford Companion to English Literature
describes Ramsey Campbell as “Britain’s most respected living horror writer”. He has been given more awards than any other writer in the field, including the Grand Master Award of the World Horror Convention, the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Horror Writers Association, the Living Legend Award of the International Horror Guild and the World Fantasy Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2015 he was made an Honorary Fellow of Liverpool John Moores University for outstanding services to literature. Among his novels are
The Face That Must Die, Incarnate, Midnight Sun, The Count of Eleven, Silent Children, The Darkest Part of the Woods, The Overnight, Secret Story, The Grin of the Dark, Thieving Fear, Creatures of the Pool, The Seven Days of Cain, Ghosts Know, The Kind Folk, Think Yourself Lucky
and
Thirteen Days by Sunset Beach
. He is presently working on a trilogy,
The Three Births of Daoloth
.
Needing Ghosts, The Last Revelation of Gla’aki, The Pretence
and
The Booking
are novellas. His collections include
Waking Nightmares, Alone with the Horrors, Ghosts and Grisly Things, Told by the Dead, Just Behind You
and
Holes for Faces
, and his non-fiction is collected as
Ramsey Campbell, Probably
. His novels
The Nameless
and
Pact of the Fathers
have been filmed in Spain. His regular columns appear in
Dead Reckonings
and
Video Watchdog
. He is the President of the Society of Fantastic Films.

Ramsey Campbell lives on Merseyside with his wife Jenny. His pleasures include classical music, good food and wine, and whatever’s in that pipe. His website is at
www.ramseycampbell.com

She was the only one watching – nose against glass – as the ferry navigated the turbines. They swooped noiselessly, churning sea and sky. They looked more delicate and awkward close up, like gargantuan flowers, and they went on for as far as she could see.

Gareth was sitting four rows back flicking through something on his phone. He’d made it clear she was irritating him, making a show of herself for a pointless view. Other passengers watched the news on big screens or dozed. The ordinary breakfast news felt incongruous in this place between places. The island was only sixty miles from the coast she’d lived on all her life, but she’d never seen it. The guidebook talked of the mists of a great magician that kept it hidden.

As they left the turbines behind, the sea and sky settled into mute bands of grey, but she still couldn’t see the island. She returned to her seat and rested her head against Gareth’s shoulder. He remained intent on his phone. Hers had lost signal and wouldn’t get it back until they got home. Gareth had forgotten to tell her before they set off that he used another sim card on the island.

She reached for the guidebook and started to reread the section of walks.

‘You don’t need that,’ Gareth said without looking up from his phone.

‘I like reading it,’ she said. ‘I just like it. I haven’t been before. I’m allowed to enjoy it.’

‘I’ll show you everything.’

She let the book fall closed on her lap and rested her head against him again. ‘I’m lucky to have my own walking, talking guidebook.’ She took hold of his hand. He continued to thumb his phone.

She dozed and when she opened her eyes again the sky had cleared to a startling blue. People were lined up against the front window. The island was there and she’d missed it appearing. She tried to sidle in between an elderly woman and a couple of middle-aged bikers. The island was small at first but it quickly became too big to be contained by the window. The view shifted with an accelerated zoom. She hadn’t taken in everything about one image of the island before it grew closer and there was more to see.

* * *

The table filled the back of the room and she caught herself on a corner as she squeezed into the place that had been laid for her. The tablecloth was crocheted and there were napkins in heavy metal rings. There were only two places set. ‘Isn’t your mum…’

‘No.’ Gareth piled his plate high with potatoes and peas from china dishes. Gareth’s plate held three slices of anaemic-looking ham. She had been given one. There was a bottle of lemonade on the table. No wine. She needed a drink. She could hear the radio from the kitchen, where his mum had hidden herself away.

‘If it was a problem us eating here… I mean we could have eaten out.’

‘No, Mum wanted to cook for us.’ He unscrewed the lemonade. There was no hiss of air. No bubbles in her glass. It must have been at the back of a cupboard for years.

The Anaglypta walls were cluttered with paintings. Each was a swirl of garish colours formed into a landscape. They glinted from some angles, but looked rutted and gouged from others. There were more of them, clearly by the same amateur hand, in Gareth’s room. ‘Are they places on the island?’ she’d asked as they unpacked their bags. ‘Did your mum do them?’ He’d just shrugged.

His room was frustratingly bland. She’d expected posters, old CDs, plastic figurines, some traces of him having grown up here. There were just the paintings, more crochet and a crooked twig and wool cross above the bed. She’d read about the crosses,
crosh cuirns
they were called, in the guidebook. They used to be put up as protection against fairies. His mum obviously had a thing for them because they were all over the house. On the living-room mantelpiece there was a line-up of family photos including several of his brother and him as children, and also his wedding photo. His ex looked young and elegant. They looked happy. Next to it was one of a newborn baby in a blue hat. ‘He’s beautiful,’ she said. ‘Why didn’t you tell me you’re an uncle?’ He’d clattered the plates on to the table and gestured for her to sit.

The lemonade left an acidic coating on her tongue. Gareth dissected his ham into long, thin strips before eating them one by one. The meat was cold and left a film of grease on their plates. The potatoes were still hard beneath their roasted edges. ‘We’ll go for a long walk tomorrow,’ he said.

* * *

Perched in a wingback chair by the window she leafed through an old tourist magazine. She was desperate to get out and start exploring, but not comfortable enough to interrupt them talking in the kitchen, or to wander round the house to find where his mum had put her boots. She fiddled with her phone, but there was nothing she could do on it. They were talking too quietly for her to be able to separate many words from the murmur of voices and cooking sounds. She heard him say something about an exchange. ‘Way it’s done,’ his mum said, ‘…if you want… returned.’

The knock at the door made her jump. She half stood, but Gareth came through to answer it.

‘This one must be for you,’ a man’s voice said. ‘I’ve been keeping it for you.’

‘Thanks,’ Gareth said, reaching out for it.

‘It came in unaddressed. Jack wanted to put it in the back with all the other dead letters. People forget a stamp, or get the wrong address, but I said to myself it’s a funny business someone forgetting the address all together. I had a feeling about it so I checked it. I think it must be for you.’

Gareth took the parcel without speaking.

‘It took you long enough to come back.’

Gareth pushed the door shut a little too hard. The paintings on the wall quivered. He put the parcel down on the dresser without looking at it and went upstairs. The bathroom door slammed.

* * *

The bus was full of locals. The only tourists were a middle-aged couple. They kept passing between them the same guidebook that she had brought. They sat right at the front and almost jumped up at every stop. On a wooded stretch of road the man dropped the guidebook, spilling leaflets everywhere.

‘That’s what they get,’ muttered an elderly woman in front of them.

She nudged Gareth and raised her eyebrows in question.

‘They didn’t say hello,’ he said.

‘We went over the fairy bridge? I read about that. You should have told me. I wanted to see it, to get a picture of the sign.’

‘Sorry.’ He went back to his phone.

‘What was that parcel this morning?’

‘I didn’t get chance to open it. Won’t be anything important.’

‘It was good of them to keep it for you.’ She cuddled into him and glanced at his phone screen.

‘Who?’

‘The post office. All that stuff the postman said, it sounded like they waited for you to come back. You wouldn’t get service like that at home.’

He turned to look out of the window. ‘Things are different here.’

* * *

The route described so neatly in the guidebook didn’t seem to relate to the landscape at all. Gareth took the lead on barely visible paths that skirted wild grass on one side and sheer drops into glistening bays on the other. Grey rocks erupted from the sea and she tried to attach them to names. ‘Is that one Sugar Loaf Rock?’ Her voice was snatched away by the wind. She stuffed the guidebook into her rucksack and tried to match his pace. She hadn’t anticipated the astonishing blue of the sea, or the violence of movement frozen in the rocks. Grey cliff faces tilted at savage angles and looked as if they might shift again. She wanted to take photo after photo but she wasn’t sure Gareth would wait. Besides, she thought, it was better to look with her eyes, not her phone, and try and hold the views in her head.

When they reached the Chasms, he strode out among them.

‘The book said we have to keep to the wall here,’ she called. ‘It’s not safe.’

‘I could walk the Chasms with my eyes closed.’ He shut his eyes and jumped to his left.

The uneven ground was riddled with what looked like rabbit holes, but instead of a fall into the earth there was a vertical drop into the roiling sea. She edged out a little in his direction, but kept one hand on the wall.

‘You can’t see them properly from there. Come here.’

She hesitated.

‘Don’t you trust me?’ There was worry in his expression, and something else she couldn’t quite read. He could be quiet and moody, but she could tell he was carrying a weight of hurt. He hadn’t talked much about how his wife had left him, but she could feel the sadness in him. She took his outstretched hand and with her eyes on the ground she wound her way after him on the narrow path between the Chasms.

They stopped to eat the packed lunch his mum had made them at a high point on what Gareth said translated as Raven’s Hill, looking down at the Calf of Man.