Dark Companions (41 page)

I find this as hard to believe as anybody would, but when I wrote “The Chimney” I didn’t know it was autobiographical. It was conceived on Christmas Day 1972, after Jenny and I had watched that splendid tale of television terror
The Stone Tape
. “Child afraid of Santa Claus— Perhaps from a very early age has associated horror with the large fireplace in his bedroom? His parents tell him of Santa Claus— But when they tell him the truth about SC, the horror comes flooding back— And something’s always moving in there towards Christmas— He sees it emerge each year: but this year he sees it in more detail…” I got as far as the charred apparition but not, at this stage, its real identity (which, as David Drake pointed out, it has in common with L. P. Hartley’s “Someone in the Lift”, a tale I’d read back in the early fifties). Often my ideas lie low for years, and I didn’t start “The Chimney” until 20 June 1975, finishing it on the 27
^th
. Only when I read the tale aloud at Jack Sullivan’s apartment on the Upper West Side years later did I remember how terrified I’d been on most Christmas Days of my childhood—not by Santa Claus but by having to go upstairs and knock on a bedroom door to invite my unseen father down for dinner. That he stayed unseen, then and for nearly all my childhood and early adulthood, only added to my dread.

And so to “The Companion”, which took years to get itself together. On 30 June 1969 I had an idea about the derelict fairground in New Brighton. At this stage the protagonist is “a young girl, frightened of people generally”. The place seems to be partly operative, with “white faces like papier-mâché at some pay windows”. Two years later I had thoughts about a ghost train in a fairground, but they weren’t incorporated—maybe, having rediscovered them in the process of writing this afterword, I may develop them. Then on 13 September 1973 there’s a page of notes for “The Companion”, including a version of the final line and thoughts for an unused encounter with a fortune-teller. The 14
^th
sees most of the ideas for Stone’s last ride, and the next few days gather more material, but I have to conclude I was writing the story by then. Certainly once Stone heads for the abandoned fairground I finished the tale in a single session.

If I had the time I’d rewrite much of my old stuff, and “The Companion” is a case where I like some of it (the second half) enough to wish the rest were better. Well, my time is limited, and I’d rather work on something new—perhaps I’ll write that ghost train tale from forty years ago. In any case, some people have liked the story—Steve King declared it a favourite, and more recently Jeremy Dyson did. Jeremy and I gave a public reading in Liverpool recently, and “The Companion” seemed to go down pretty well with the audience. Maybe there’s life in these old tales yet, and even in this old writer. I’m happy to see
Dark Companions
rise from its grave.

Ramsey Campbell

Deep Blue Sea Apartments

Georgioupolis, Crete

20 September 2011

About the Author

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 and the Living Legend Award of the International Horror Guild. 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
and
Ghosts Know.
Forthcoming is
The Kind Folk.
His collections include
Waking Nightmares
,
Alone with the Horrors, Ghosts and Grisly Things
,
Told by the Dead
and
Just Behind You
, 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
Prism
,
All Hallows
,
Dead Reckonings
and
Video Watchdog
. He is the President of the British Fantasy Society and 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 web site is at
www.ramseycampbell.com
.

Look for these titles by Ramsey Campbell

Now Available:

The Seven Days of Cain

Ancient Images

Obsession

The Hungry Moon

Is anyone really innocent?

The Seven Days of Cain

© 2010 Ramsey Campbell

On two continents, weeks apart, two people are brutally murdered: a Barcelona street performer and a New York playwright are each gruesomely tortured to death. In Britain, photographer Andy Bentley begins receiving mysterious emails.
 
The messages refer to the killings and contain hints that the murderer has a personal connection to Andy. But what is it?
 
Are the emails coming from the killer himself?
 
And what, if anything, does Andy’s past have to do with the deaths? As the answers begin to take shape Andy will be forced to confront not only the consequences of his actions, but also the uncertainly of reality itself.
 
Before that happens, how much that he loves will be destroyed?

Enjoy the following excerpt for
The Seven Days of Cain:

“Is it you?”

Since she was unable to move her head or her eyes, Serena couldn’t see whoever had spoken. He was just a blurred shape at the edge of her vision until he moved closer, holding up a sheet of paper. It put her in mind of a wanted poster or a leaflet about somebody lost, because it bore a photograph. It was a page from an Internet site called
Things To Look Out For In Barcelona
. “Did you know you were famous?” the man said.

She was disconcerted to find that she couldn’t recall ever having seen a picture of herself, however often she’d been aware of tourists taking them. The photograph was captioned
The secret statue
, and showed her very much as she imagined she was now, her large eyes and faintly tanned thin face intent on the view straight ahead, one finger miming pensiveness as it rested against her nearly invisible lips to indicate the tip of her snub nose. While the image didn’t take up much of the page, she couldn’t read the text without shifting her eyes. She’d resisted many determined attempts to trick her into abandoning her stance, but it took an effort to hold her vision still as the man took the page out of sight. “Penny for them,” he said.

Though she must have heard the phrase a dozen times or more, just now it sounded like an unwelcome reminder. It made her aware of all the newspaper kiosks around her on the boulevard. She was trying to recapture the peace that the shade of the plane trees and the clamour of caged birds usually gave her—the sense of standing in the depths of a forest even though she was surrounded by an ever-changing crowd on a pavement that divided four lanes of traffic—when he said “How much do you want to talk?”

What made him think she wanted to at all? She was happiest when she was quiet. She didn’t understand his question until he showed her a twenty-euro note. Instead of adding it to the coins on her supine rucksack he doubled the amount. “Say when you want me to stop,” he said.

Serena was reminded of the night several English football fans had mistaken her for one of the prostitutes who loitered at the seaward end of the boulevard. She’d never been so glad to have a bicycle. She didn’t need memories like that; she didn’t need many at all. The man beside her was showing her another twenty; another, another… “That’s one for each day of the week,” he eventually said.

It was enough to buy space in a camp by the beach for a month. However safe she found pitching her tent in a cove so secluded that nobody else seemed to suspect its existence, she might like to feel safer just now. All the same, she’d seen ten notes before she let go of the bicycle that was propped against a lamp-standard. “What exactly do you think you’re buying?”

“Whatever you can give me.”

The sun was in Serena’s eyes now that she was facing him, and she couldn’t make out his expression. His features were almost as blurred as her picture, a featureless silhouette the sun was projecting through the page in his hand. “Is that you?” she said, pointing at the blank side of the page.

“Is this my site, do you mean? I’m from another one entirely, and I’d like to do an interview.”

“Where?”

“Wherever you prefer. Right here if it’s where you’re most comfortable.”

“We could sit down at least.” As he looked around for seats she said “Will you be showing me where you’re from?”

“I’ve printed nothing else out if that’s what you mean. Don’t talk if you think it could harm you somehow,” he said and glanced past her at the human statues stationed all the way along the Ramblas to Placa de la Catalunya. “I expect some of your competitors would welcome a fee for a chat.”

Serena didn’t know why she was hesitating. Where was the risk in the midst of the evening crowds? “Never mind them,” she said and took the notes out of his hand.

She slipped them inside her jacket and stooped to gather up the coins scattered on her rucksack. As she made to rest it on the handlebars of the bicycle he said “Allow me. We don’t want you thinking I’m no gentleman.”

He mimed surprise at the weight of the bag. “Is this all there is to you?”

Serena laughed at least as much for her own benefit as his. “I’ve got a locker at the station.”

“It still doesn’t seem much to show for a life.” As though the question followed he said “Do you drink?”

“When I’m thirsty.”

“Everything a person’s meant to do, is that the trick?” By the time Serena deduced that he had in mind statues that came to life, he was saying “Let me buy you one.”

“I wouldn’t mind a coffee,” Serena said.

She wheeled the bicycle to an outpost of a café, where she chained the bicycle to a lamp-standard. Her host sat beside it and planted the rucksack on the chair next to him. Once a waitress had dodged across the road to take his order for two coffees, he inched his chair out of the shade of a plane tree. “So tell me your story,” he said.

The sun was in Serena’s eyes again, and she might have fancied he was gazing at her out of a jungle that teemed with all the birds she could hear in the cages behind him. “Where would you like me to start?” she said.

“Where you come from.”

It sounded like the simplest of questions, but it reminded her of far too much. She was attempting to take refuge in the present when he said “I’m not prying, am I?”

“I expect that’s your job.”

“There’s a lot more to me than that.” Less forcefully he said “Tell me how you started doing what you do.”

“It was someone else’s idea really.” This seemed to threaten her with memories too, and so she tried saying “I suppose I just showed up in the right place at the right time.”

“Which were those?”

“I was watching someone else stay still.” She couldn’t help feeling grateful that this memory was vivid—the figure painted as white as his toga and the pillar he was leaning on. “People thought I was being a statue as well,” she said, “and threw money where they do.”

It had felt like being accepted for herself and becoming her own inner stillness. “At your feet, you mean,” he said. “How long have been people been paying their tributes?”

Serena was distracted by the coffees the waitress brought. The tiny cups reminded her of a dolls’ tea party—a game in a garden swimming with shadows of foliage, just like the table on the Ramblas—though she’d never been invited to one. The thought led somewhere she was anxious to avoid, and she tried to find an answer that would keep it distant. “Ever since,” she said.

“You haven’t made yourself up. You don’t want to be like the rest, is that the plan?”

“I wasn’t made up the first time. I’ve never felt I needed to be since.”

“You aren’t trying not to be noticed.”

“I’m happy if people do but I won’t be upset if they don’t. I’m happy to be alive, that’s all.”

“Sounds like a fairy tale.”

“It’s real, though.”

As her companion gazed at her, a caged bird uttered a chattering scream that she could easily have taken for laughter. “When did you realise you were being looked for?” the man said.

For a moment the question made Serena feel as trapped as the bird, and she tried to sound careless. “Who’s looking?”

“Some of the people who’ve seen this, do you think?” He held up the printout and read “Keep an eye out for the pensive lady of the Ramblas, the subtlest of the living sculptures. You’ll know her by her bike and rucksack. She’ll move if you pay her, but try asking her to speak. Good luck with finding out her name.”

“It’s Serena.”

“And I’m Dias.”

“That’s a good Portuguese name.” When the sunlight through the foliage jittered in her eyes she said “Do you mind if we sit somewhere else? I’d like to be able to see.”

“Let’s move on by all means. Do you know what I’d like to see you doing?”

So that was why he’d paid so much, she thought, and all his talk was only a preamble. “I’ve no idea,” she said and wished it were the truth.

“No need to think I’m whatever you’re thinking I am. I’d just like to watch you work. I didn’t have much time before.”

“Where are you asking me to go?”

“Wherever you feel at home,” Dias said and raised a lazy fist to point behind him with his thumb. “Along here?”