Ramsey Campbell - 1976 - The Doll Who Ate His Mother (24 page)

 
          
She
loaded the tray, shaking her head at herself. She was so much at ease that she
hid from him in the kitchen, as she had from Edmund! All right: she’d prove her
ease to herself. She prepared her mind as she prepared the coffee.

 
          
She
prepared herself too rigidly. She walked up the hall toward the living room,
gracefully.
Delicately.
Prettily.
Tinily
.
Like a pixie. Like a gnome. Stop that, she demanded, clenching her mind.

 
          
Chris
was glancing at her rewritten paragraph. Had he been Edmund, she would have
minded. My brother Rob
Frayn
was a radio personality,
well-known locally for … Of all the men I’ve known I was fondest of ‘ Although
many people listened to his record show, few people really knew … Maybe it’s
because I know all his faults that … “Chris,” she said from the doorway.

 
          
“Yeah,”
he said, laying aside the page after a last glance.

 
          
She
shouldn’t have made him look up. Now her speech was blocked. She was struggling
to think of something else when it spilled out. “There was a bloke I went out
with years ago,” she said rapidly. “He used to call me Stumpy-legs. Do I look
like that to you?”

 
          
“So
that’s where you got that stuff about being deformed. You mean you think I see
you that way?”

 
          
“I
just wanted to hear whether you did.”

 
          
“Shit,
no,” he said impatiently.

 
          
She
felt very light as she walked across the room, very natural. She sat down
smiling opposite him. “I didn’t think so,” she said.

 
          
She
poured coffee. “Listen, when all this business peters out,” she said, “
we
don’t want to lose touch, do we?” Her instinct told her
they’d seen the last of Edmund. Rob and Kelly had retreated to a comfortable
distance in her mind. (
one
terrible hasty thought:
Rob’s arm was still somewhere.) “I want you to come to our school,” she said.
“With the group, the TTG.”

 
          
“Yeah,
I’ll talk to them, see what they say.”

 
          
“You
know,” she said, “in a way I’m glad it’s ending like this. I wouldn’t like to
think of Edmund getting hold of Kelly. I just don’t like that man. Whatever
Kelly did, I don’t think he deserves Edmund. She sucked in her cheek, shaking
her head. “I think he’s had enough, what with that teacher and his grandmother.
No wonder he went the way he did, with them to contend with. I’m sure it was
she who gave him this thing about
Mulgrave
Street by
telling him about it, a psychological thing,
a
fixation. I mean, of course he’ll have to be caught,” she said.
“For his own good as much as anyone’s.”

 
          
That
was an awful
cliche
. But she meant it; she could look
at Kelly that way now, in her newfound ease. She could forgive him, because it
hadn’t really been his fault. She gazed at Chris, anxious to be sure he didn’t
think she was being insincere.

 
          
She
was gazing at him. Oh Christ, Chris thought. She knows.

 
          
By
the time he reached his flat, Chris was no longer sure of anything. He was even
unsure why he’d joined Edmund’s hunt.

 
          
His
plan had seemed brilliantly simple. As soon as he’d read the newspaper report
about Edmund he had known what to do. When he’d rung the newspaper for Edmund’s
address, everything the reporter said had confirmed his plan. By joining Edmund
he wouldn’t only be able to divert the hunt, if it came too close; he would be
invisible in the last place they’d think to look.

 
          
An
empty, blank-faced bus passed on Princes Road. As he reached the house he felt
Mulgrave
Street plucking restlessly at him. He hurried into
the resounding hall. Now he wondered if he’d joined the hunt so as to trace the
house in
Mulgrave
Street.

 
          
The
stairs thumped dully beneath him. The sound nagged at his confusion. He hadn’t
been so confused since his moment of panic when he’d recognized Edmund. The
hotel bedroom door had opened, and there was the boy who had watched him and
Cyril. Chris had felt hollow with panic. Then he’d realized that the man didn’t
know him. At once he’d felt flattered that Edmund wanted to write a book about
him, after all this time. He’d
strode
into the hotel
room, toward the girl’s voice: a star’s entrance. He was going to enjoy
himself.

 
          
The
girl had been Clare. That had doubled his delight. She was fine, despite the
car crash. He need feel no guilt at all. He ground his teeth as he ground the
key in the lock of his flat. It was his delight with Clare that had tricked
him.

 
          
He’d
been dazzled by her gesture of bringing him back into the hunt. He had taken
his performance too far in stalking out of Edmund’s room; it had seemed the
only way to play the scene, but he’d acted himself out of the hunt. He
shouldn’t have let himself react so strongly—Edmund reminded him of nothing so
much as an ineffectual Cyril. He’d tried to think of a way to rejoin the hunt,
in vain. Then Clare had come to him in Church Street and had handed him the
answer. He’d felt overwhelmingly fond of her.

 
          
He
had enjoyed that day. He had been spilling his delight. He’d enjoyed the game
in the launderette most of all, pretending to be gay so that Mrs. Laird
wouldn’t recognize him, pretending not to know she had the same doctor as his
grandmother, so that Clare could see him find that out for Edmund. He’d enjoyed
himself too much, because he’d betrayed himself to Clare. Then he’d betrayed
himself doubly, because he’d thought she hadn’t noticed.

 
          
He
slammed the door viciously. Even here in his flat he could feel the plucking,
feeble but relentless, like an old man refusing to die. He was sure it had
grown stronger since George had told them about the black magic. As soon as
George had mentioned the magician’s dolls, Chris had felt he’d always known
about them.

 
          
Then
Clare had suggested searching
Mulgrave
Street. Chris
had tried alone, later in the week. But he’d been unable to bear the sense of
sinking helplessly into
himself
, into darkness, into
the earth; he’d fled. He had almost refused to join Clare, except that a
refusal might have seemed suspicious. As it happened, in the car he’d had no
sense of the house at all; Clare’s presence had swamped it.

 
          
As
their search had run down he had become progressively less sure why he wanted
to find the house. She had been confusing him deliberately, that was why. It
was lucky for her they hadn’t found the house and gone in. He
bared
his teeth: her presence wouldn’t have been able to
swamp it then.

 
          
Back
at her flat she’d revealed that she knew who he was. She had only pretended not
to notice what he’d said outside the launderette. She had noticed that he’d
mentioned St. Joseph’s, though she hadn’t named the school.

 
          
For
a moment he had wanted to tell her she was right. He had been sure, as she
gazed at him, that she was willing him to tell her. Then he’d seen that she had
been playing a game with him ever since the launderette. Getting him invited to
the
Pughs
’ house, making sure he was confronted with
his grandmother, taking him to
Mulgrave
Street—everything had been a game, aimed at forcing him to betray himself.
Perhaps she had suspected him earlier; perhaps that was why she’d come to him
in Church Street. He’d gazed blindly into the coffee; it had scalded his
throat, startling him to his feet. “I’ve got to go,” he’d said, and had fled
before he attacked her in his mounting fury.

 
          
Nothing
was sure now. Everything safe was giving way beneath him. She had done that. He
stabbed the kitchen table; the knife stood trembling.
Clare,
and Maggie, the girl in TTG.

 
          
He
didn’t even feel safe in TTG now. Of everything, it was the theatre, acting,
that made him feel most secure. He’d learned that at school, the only thing
he’d thought worth learning. He had been friendly with a boy in the Vale School
Players; they’d masturbated each other a few times. His friend had liked
dressing up. He’d invited Chris to rehearsals; perhaps he’d wanted to see him
dressed up too, perhaps he wanted them to spend more time together. The master
had asked Chris to act a small part. He’d done as he was told, as he generally
did at school, indifferently.

 
          
He’d
struggled with the part, frustrated. He had become furious with himself, with
his ineptness, with the watchers. “Don’t force it,” the master had said.
“You’re trying too hard. Let yourself go, just let
yourself
relax into the part.” Eventually he’d asked if Chris wanted to give up, but by
then Chris was furiously determined.

 
          
The
day after he’d realized there was no God, Chris had let
himself
go into the part without even trying.

 
          
He
couldn’t have imagined how easy it was. The lightness and relief he’d felt on
the way to school, free of his guilt, had been nothing to the ease he’d felt
while acting. Later, if he ever felt uneasy with himself, it helped him; what
he did to people was only acting, after all; it was only something he did, not
the whole of him. Except for the day he’d returned to St. Joseph’s with the
Vale School Players, when the cat had distracted the audience from him, he had
never felt easier than when acting, or with actors.

 
          
Until Maggie had begun to nag him.
The people in TTG left
him alone when he wanted to
be,
didn’t probe. But
Maggie had been different, more aggressive. She’d given him hash cake to eat
with the rest of them, in her flat. He hadn’t been sure he wanted to eat it; he
blamed her. Then for hours he’d kept sinking into himself as if into thick mud;
he’d pulled himself free with a start like the start of awakening, except that
each time he began sinking again at once; no light had seemed to reach him; the
others were far away, cut off from him by the gaps that widened in his
consciousness. It seemed impossible that he would ever escape.

 
          
Eventually
he’d fled to catch a bus downtown, anywhere, to try to leave behind what was
happening. Voices rose from the crowd on the bus, hurtling at him; everyone
knew he’d been eating hash. He’d taken refuge in Bonnie and Clyde, which was
showing again, but he’d had to leave when the first of the Barrow gang was
shot, face exploding into blood. By then the worst of his experience was over.
Later, when he’d moved to this flat, he found he felt very much like that near
Mulgrave
Street at night. Another time Maggie had offered
him acid, but he’d never touched drugs again.

 
          
She’d
kept asking to come to his flat. TTG met at one another’s homes for drinks or a
smoke. Chris had managed to avoid inviting them; he felt safest of all in his
flat, where he could always make problems come right in his mind. In his flat
he didn’t even need to act being easy with people, he need only be himself. Then
Maggie had begun: “When are we coming up to yours?” One of these days she’d try
to get in without an invitation. He couldn’t even be sure of his own flat now.

 
          
He
slammed the plate of cheese salad on the table; the plate cracked. Of all the
things his grandmother had hung on him, vegetarianism was the one he hadn’t
slipped off—that, and his first name, which he’d always assumed his mother had
given him. Vegetarianism showed he didn’t need to eat anything else.

 
          
His
toenails scraped at his sandals, nervous from the restless plucking. He knew
where it came from now: the magician’s house, somewhere up
Mulgrave
Street. It reached into his flat for him. He took off his spectacles, but then
the walls were insubstantial as fog; he put on his spectacles hastily.

 
          
He
had been returning toward that house ever since he’d left Liverpool. When he’d
left his grandmother he had gone at once to London, to stay with the actor who
had introduced him to the Vale School Players. After that he’d worked with
various theatre groups, always nearer Liverpool. Once back in Liverpool, he had
begun moving closer to the house.