Ramsey Campbell - 1976 - The Doll Who Ate His Mother (12 page)

 
          
Then
a grey-haired head rose above the end of the table and demanded, “Yes?”

 
          
The
man had been sitting back in an easy chair. She guessed him to be in his early
sixties, but the lines that pinched his eyes and mouth were less lines of age
than a weary cynicism, the kind of cynicism she’d seen turn to vindictiveness.
She had hoped for a young man, so that she could make him feel masculine for
helping her. But if she didn’t go through with it now she couldn’t come back.
She was reaching for her story when he said, “If you’re here for David, he’ll
be back at one.”

 
          
The
large clock on the wall said twenty-five to one; the minute hand sprang up a
minute. Before she knew what she was risking she said, “Has David told you all
about me?”

 
          
If
he had, she could say, “Well, you can see that’s not me,” laughing, passing it
off as a joke, she didn’t mean any harm, please let her go now, only a joke.
But the man said, “All he said was that if a girl came up she’d be for him.”

 
          
“Aren’t
men conceited?” She was beginning to enjoy the game even though she felt
light-headed, almost weightless. She floated to the easy chair opposite the
man. The clock’s hand twitched, as if the nostrils of its winder holes were
tickling. Twenty-three minutes. “Have you worked here long?” she said.

 
          
“Since
you were in your cradle, I should think.”

 
          
She
toyed with a magazine that had perhaps been confiscated. HE CUT UP YOUNG
VIRGINS AND LAUGHED. His Potency Came From Not Having Orgasms. “You must have
been here when Christopher Kelly was,” she said, gazing blindly at the
magazine.

 
          
His
bright sharp eyes were scrutinizing her. “What do you know about Kelly?”

 
          
“Well,
er
,” she said. She had to chance it.

 
          
“David,”
she said.

 
          
“David
wasn’t here then.”

 
          
“No,
someone told him about it. Perhaps you did.”

 
          
“I
shouldn’t be surprised.” He’d completed his scrutiny; she managed to look up.
“That terrible boy,” he said, shaking his head. “These children today are bad
enough, but I don’t think anyone who was here then will ever forget him. I only
hope he had no lasting influence on the other children. He had too many
friends, that
boy,
he was always riding someone else’s
bicycle. He shouldn’t have been allowed into an ordinary school at all. That’s
not our job, that kind of case.”

 
          
She
nodded eagerly. Perhaps he would tell her something new about Kelly; he might
even give her a cue to ask to look at their records. “I pity whoever had to
deal with him after he left us,” the teacher said.
“And his
poor grandmother having to look after him by herself, oh dear.
Do you
know, I think he was even worse when he came
back.
”

 
          
“Came
back here?” Her surprise was showing.
“To this school?”

 
          
“That’s
right.” He frowned at her. “Why are you so interested in Kelly?” he said
sharply.

 
          
“Didn’t
David tell you what I do?”

 
          
“He
told me nothing. Not even your name.”

 
          
“It’s—”
(Oh God, a name, a name!) “It’s Clare,” she said. “I’m a teacher too. That’s
why I’m interested.”

 
          
“Haven’t
you a surname?”

 
          
She’d
anticipated that; she grabbed the last name she could remember having heard.
“Clare Barrow,” she said.

 
          
“And
you’ve come into teaching? May God protect you,
then.
The law won’t. Or are you one of those who don’t believe in upsetting the
little dears? Let me tell you, I used to teach them more with a clout round the
head than half of these people teach them in years. But now it’s oh no, you
might damage their poor little brains. Brains! Half of them haven’t got any,
and most of the rest are warped beyond repair. These days they’re sending them
up from the junior school not even able to read.
And as for
spelling, oh dear me.
The teachers want teaching themselves these days.”

 
          
“Have
you tried teaching a class of thirty-five lately?” Clare said furiously. “Maybe
if they gave us enough staff for a sensible pupil-teacher ratio, you wouldn’t
have so much to complain about.”

 
          
He
relaxed visibly. “Yes, you’re a teacher,” he said. “I thought for a while you
were trying to delude me. We have to be careful in this district, you see. Last
year we had a man pretending to be an electrician. He didn’t get past me. I
don’t exercise every day for no reason. He must have been thirty years my
junior, but I held on to him until the police arrived.”

 
          
Seventeen
minutes to one. Clare smiled, nodding. He doesn’t suspect any more, she
reassured the cold hole of fear in her stomach. “You were saying Kelly came
back,” she said.

 
          
“Yes,
he came back. Dear me, he did. When I saw him in the playground I thought it
must be his double, until I saw his expression. No one else on earth ever
looked like that. He always looked as if he were listening to something no one
else could hear. Like Joan of Arc. But it must have been a devil he was
listening to.

 
          
“I
went straight up to him, among all his schoolfellows, and took him by the
collar. His school had sent one young girl in charge of the whole group,
supposed to keep discipline. She didn’t look much older than her charges. I
told her in front of them: “We’ve thrown this one out once, don’t think we
won’t throw him out again if he isn’t on his best
behaviour
.”

 
          
Clare
smiled down at the magazine; she didn’t trust herself to look at him.
Interfering old maid.
She’d have liked him to try that on
with her. “Am I boring you?” he said.

 
          
WAS
HIS POWER OVER HIS VICTIMS BLACK MAGIC? “No, of course not,” she said, forcing
herself to lay aside the magazine and smile at him. “Please go on.”

 
          
“This
young girl told me they were from the Vale School. They’d come to give us an
end-of-term treat,” he said. “I wasn’t interested. That’s not why the country
pays for schools. Of course it wasn’t up to me to challenge the head’s decision,”
he said rather bitterly. “So here was Kelly back again, as if he hadn’t
entertained us enough when we had him.

 
          
“My
class had to go to watch their treat, but I didn’t. I wasn’t going to let that
boy have me as an audience, though some of my colleagues had no compunction. I
came up here and marked homework. And that was how I came to see Kelly chasing
the cat.

 
          
“The
caretaker had a cat called Felix. I was opposed to letting him keep it in the
school, but of course that was the head’s decision; he didn’t consult me. Half
the boys here would set fire to a cat, given half the chance. But Felix had
managed to escape injury.

 
          
“I
presume they didn’t need Kelly for a while, otherwise he couldn’t have slipped
out of the hall unnoticed. I might not have noticed him myself if I hadn’t
found this room stuffy and got up to open the window. I was about to do so when
I saw Kelly down there in the playground, chasing the cat. But chasing isn’t
the right word. He was stalking it, like an animal.

 
          
“I
once saw a film on television. I don’t watch as a rule, but I don’t think a
little does harm. They showed a lizard which had lived underground all its
life, an eyeless thing. They showed how it walked, slowly and delicately, with
its fingers stepping along, feeling its way. I had never seen anything so
furtive and horrible—until I looked out of that window.
Because
out there in the sunlight that enormous fat boy was stalking exactly like the
lizard, on all fours.
And on his face was a sort of hungry joy I shall
always hope to forget.

 
          
“When
I knocked on the window he looked up at me. You know I’m a strong man, but I
was glad there were two floors between us. Then he fled back to the hall.
Afterward I told the girl in charge what had happened. Do you know what she
did?
Nothing.
Oh no, the cat had distracted people’s
attention from him or some such nonsense, and he hadn’t done anything really.
She wouldn’t admit what he was, you see. She wanted to believe he was just a
boy.”

 
          
“But
what was he?” Clare said, frustrated. “Did anyone know why he was like that?”

 
          
“Three
people did.” She suppressed a giggle; it was like a banal thriller—perhaps
written by Edmund.

 
          
“The head,” he said, “and Kelly’s class master, and his
grandmother.
It was she who told them all about him. One of my
colleagues asked the head afterwards what she’d had to say, but he made it
clear that was none of their business. As for the class master, he was off a
week recovering; no one needed to be told not to question him. He never
recovered completely. He used to run away from the sight of blood, and once I
had almost to carry him into the school just because he’d seen an expectant
mother going by. I’ve no idea what that meant to him. But as for Kelly, I
believe he was possessed. Such things do still happen, you know. Science has
yet to find a cure for them.”

 
          
Perhaps,
perhaps, Clare was interrupting.
Five to one.
“Is
Kelly’s class master here now?” she said.

 
          
“Dear me, no.
He left years ago; he could never teach
properly after that. He never trusted the children again, once he knew what
Kelly had been hiding. You wanted to question him, did you?”

 
          
Question?
Did he know why she was here, after all? She
snatched at the only thought left in her suddenly dull mind.
Records.
“I was just thinking how much trouble he must have had filling in Kelly’s
record card,” she said.

 
          
“Yes
indeed. I recall he was very glad to see the record go.”

 
          
“Go
where?”

 
          
“To
the Vale School, when Kelly went there, of course.”

 
          
“Yes,
of course,” Clare said dully. “You wouldn’t have kept any record of him here at
all.”

 
          
The
clock’s hands
twitched,
a nervous upturned moustache.
At least she could leave, knowing she’d teased out all the information to be
had. “I think I’ll go down and wait for David,” she said. “It’s too nice to be
inside.”

 
          
“I
imagine he’s on his way up now. That clock is slow. It’s well past one.”

 
          
When
she grabbed its strap her handbag almost vomited its contents; she knew how it
felt. “I’ll catch him on the stairs,” she said. “I must get back to work. To
school, I mean.
Where I work.”
She was at the door
when the grey-haired master said, “Odd you should mention Kelly. I bumped into
a friend of his grandmother’s only a few weeks ago.”

 
          
“Which
friend was that?” Don’t sound so eager, don’t waste time, don’t wait, run, it’s
past one.

 
          
“A woman who would sometimes collect Kelly from school.
I’ve
no idea of her name. She works in a launderette on Lodge Lane.”

 
          
But
Clare drove that way to work! “Which, the one on the corner of, of”—oh God,
David would open the door in a minute, the door was too thick for her to hear
him coming—”of Cedar Grove?”

 
          
“No, the one next to the Bingo hall.”
He turned toward the
window as a motorcycle roared below. “Here’s David now,” he said. “David!” he
called.