The Collected Short Fiction of Ramsey Campbell Part 88

They swung him through the doorway by his elbows and deposited him on the carpet. "It couldn't be anybody else's room," the driver said, dropping the slippers in front of Shone. "See, you're already here."

Shone looked where the policemen were gazing with such sympathy it felt like a weight that was pressing him into the room. A photograph of himself and Ruth, arms around each other's shoulders with a distant mountain behind, had been removed from his drenched suit and propped on the shelf in place of the telephone. "I just brought that," he protested, "you can see how wet it was," and limped across the room to don his shoes. He hadn't reached them when he saw himself in the mirror.

He stood swaying a little, unable to retreat from the sight. He heard the policemen murmur together and withdraw, and their descent of the stairs, and eventually the dual slam of car doors and the departure of the vehicle. His reflection still hadn't allowed him to move. It was no use his telling himself that some of the tangle of wrinkles might be cobwebs, not when his hair was no longer graying but white. "All right, I see it," he yelled-he had no idea at whom. "I'm old. I'm old."

"Soon," said a whisper like an escape of gas in the corridor, along which darkness was approaching as the lamps failed one by one. "You'll be plenty of fun yet," the remains of another voice said somewhere in his room. Before he could bring himself to look for its source, an item at the end of most of an arm fumbled around the door and switched out the light. The dark felt as though his vision was abandoning him, but he knew it was the start of another game. Soon he would know if it was worse than hide-and-seek-worse than the first sticky unseen touch of the web of the house on his face.

No Story in It (2000)

'Grandad.'

Boswell turned from locking the front door to see Gemima running up the garden path cracked by the late September heat. Her mother April was at the tipsy gate, and April's husband Rod was climbing out of their rusty crimson Nissan. 'Oh, Dad,' April cried, slapping her forehead hard enough to make him wince. 'You're off to London. How could we forget it was today, Rod?'

Rod pursed thick lips beneath a ginger moustache broader than his otherwise schoolboyish plump face. 'We must have had other things on our mind. It looks as if I'm joining you, Jack.'

'You'll tell me how,' Boswell said as Gemima's small hot five-year-old hand found his grasp.

'We've just learned I'm a cut-back.'

'More of a set-back, will it be? I'm sure there's a demand for teachers of your experience.'

'I'm afraid you're a bit out of touch with the present.'

Boswell saw his daughter willing him not to take the bait. 'Can we save the discussion for my return?' he said. 'I've a bus and then a train to catch.'

'We can run your father to the station, can't we? We want to tell him our proposal.' Rod bent the pa.s.senger seat forward. 'Let's keep the men together,' he said.

As Boswell hauled the reluctant belt across himself he glanced up. Usually Gemima reminded him poignantly of her mother at her age - large brown eyes with high startled eyebrows, inquisitive nose, pale prim lips - but in the mirror April's face looked not much less small, just more lined. The car jerked forward, grating its innards, and the radio announced 'A renewed threat of war-' before Rod switched it off. Once the car was past the worst of the potholes in the main road, Boswell said 'So propose.'

'We wondered how you were finding life on your own,' Rod said. 'We thought it mightn't be the ideal situation for someone with your turn of mind.'

'Rod. Dad-'

Her husband gave the mirror a look he might have aimed at a child who'd spoken out of turn in cla.s.s. 'Since we've all overextended ourselves, we think the solution is to pool our resources.'

'Which are those?'

'We wondered how the notion of our moving in with you might sound.'

'Sounds fun,' Gemima cried.

Rod's ability to imagine living with Boswell for any length of time showed how desperate he, if not April, was. 'What about your own house?' Boswell said.

'There are plenty of respectable couples eager to rent these days. We'd pay you rent, of course. Surely it makes sense for all of us.'

'Can I give you a decision when I'm back from London?' Boswell said, mostly to April's hopeful reflection. 'Maybe you won't have to give up your house. Maybe soon I'll be able to offer you financial help.'

'Christ,' Rod snarled, a sound like a gnas.h.i.+ng of teeth.

To start with the noise the car made was hardly harsher. Boswell thought the rear b.u.mper was dragging on the road until tenement blocks jerked up in the mirror as though to seize the vehicle, which ground loudly to a halt. 'Out,' Rod cried in a tone poised to pounce on nonsense.

'Is this like one of your stories, Grandad?' Gemima giggled as she followed Boswell out of the car.

'No,' her father said through his teeth and flung the boot open. 'This is real.'

Boswell responded only by going to look. The suspension had collapsed, thrusting the wheels up through the rusty arches. April took Gemima's hand, Boswell sensed not least to keep her quiet, and murmured 'Oh, Rod.'

Boswell was staring at the tenements. Those not boarded up were tattooed with graffiti inside and out, and he saw watchers at as many broken as unbroken windows. He thought of the parcel a fan had once given him with instructions not to open it until he was home, the present that had been one of Jean's excuses for divorcing him. 'Come with me to the station,' he urged, 'and you can phone whoever you need to phone.'

When the Aireys failed to move immediately he stretched out a hand to them and saw his shadow printed next to theirs on a wall, either half demolished or never completed, in front of the tenements. A small child holding a woman's hand, a man slouching beside them with a fist stuffed in his pocket, a second man gesturing empty-handed at them...The shadows seemed to blacken, the sunlight to brighten like inspiration, but that had taken no form when the approach of a taxi distracted him. His shadow roused itself as he dashed into the rubbly road to flag the taxi down. 'I'll pay,' he told Rod.

'Here's Jack Boswell, everyone,' Quentin Sedgwick shouted. 'Here's our star author. Come and meet him.'

It was going to be worth it, Boswell thought. Publis.h.i.+ng had changed since all his books were in print - indeed, since any were. Sedgwick, a tall thin young but balding man with wiry veins exposed by a singlet and shorts, had met him at Waterloo, pausing barely long enough to deliver an intense handshake before treating him to a headlong ten-minute march and a stream of enthusiasm for his work. The journey ended at a house in the midst of a crush of them resting their fronts on the pavement. At least the polished nameplate of Ca.s.sandra Press had to be visible to anyone who pa.s.sed. Beyond it a hall that smelled of curried vegetables was occupied by a double-parked pair of bicycles and a steep staircase not much wider than their handlebars. 'Amazing, isn't it?' Sedgwick declared. 'It's like one of your early things, being able to publish from home. Except in a story of yours the computers would take over and tell us what to write.'

'I don't remember writing that,' Boswell said with some unsureness.

'No, I just made it up. Not bad, was it?' Sedgwick said, running upstairs. 'Here's Jack Boswell, everyone...'

A young woman with a small pinched studded face and glistening black hair spiky as an armoured fist emerged from somewhere on the ground floor as Sedgwick threw open doors to reveal two cramped rooms, each featuring a computer terminal, at one of which an even younger woman with blonde hair the length of her filmy flowered blouse was composing an advertis.e.m.e.nt. 'Starts with C, ends with e,' Sedgwick said of her, and of the studded woman 'Bren, like the gun. Our troubleshooter.'

Boswell grinned, feeling someone should. 'Just the three of you?'

'Small is sneaky, I keep telling the girls. While the big houses are being dragged down by excess personnel, we move into the market they're too c.u.mbersome to handle. Carole, show him his page.'

The publicist saved her work twice before displaying the Ca.s.sandra Press catalogue. She scrolled past the colophon, a C with a P hooked on it, and a parade of authors: Ferdy Thorn, ex-marine turned ecological warrior; Germaine Gossett, feminist fantasy writer; Torin Bergman, Scandinavia's leading magic realist...'Forgive my ignorance,' Boswell said, 'but these are all new to me.'

'They're the future.' Sedgwick cleared his throat and grabbed Boswell's shoulder to lean him towards the computer. 'Here's someone we all know.'

BOSWELL'S BACK! the page announced in letters so large they left room only for a shout-line from, Boswell remembered, theObserver twenty years ago - 'Britain's best SF writer since Wyndham and Wells' - and a scattering of t.i.tles: The Future Just Began, Tomorrow Was Yesterday, Wave Goodbye To Earth, Terra Spells Terror, Science Lies In Wait...'It'll look better when we have covers to reproduce,' Carole said. 'I couldn't write much. I don't know your work.'

'That's because I've been devouring it all over again, Jack. You thought you might have copies for my fair helpers, didn't you?'

'So I have,' Boswell said, struggling to spring the catches of his aged briefcase.

'See what you think when you've read these. Some for you as well, Bren,' Sedgwick said, pa.s.sing out Boswell's last remaining hardcovers of several of his books. 'Here's a Hugo winner and look, this one got the Prix du Fantastiqueecologique. Will you girls excuse us now? I hear the call of lunch.'

They were in sight of Waterloo Station again when he seized Boswell's elbow to steer him into the Delphi, a tiny restaurant crammed with deserted tables spread with pink-and-white checked cloths. 'This is what one of our greatest authors looks like, Nikos,' Sedgwick announced. 'Let's have all we can eat and a litre of your red if that's your style, Jack, to be going on with.'

The ma.s.sive dark-skinned variously hairy proprietor brought them a carafe without a stopper and a brace of gla.s.ses Boswell would have expected to hold water. Sedgwick filled them with wine and dealt Boswell's a vigorous clunk. 'Here's to us. Here's to your legendary unpublished books.'

'Not for much longer.'

'What a scoop for Ca.s.sandra. I don't know which I like best, Don't Make Me Mad or Only We Are Left. Listen to this, Nikos. There are going to be so many mentally ill people they have to be given the vote and everyone's made to have one as a lodger. And a father has to seduce his daughter or the human race dies out.'

'Very nice.'

'Ignore him, Jack. They couldn't be anyone else but you.'

'I'm glad you feel that way. You don't think they're a little too dark even for me?'

'Not a shade, and certainly not for Ca.s.sandra. Wait till you read our other books.'

Here Nikos brought meze, an oval plate splattered with varieties of goo. Sedgwick waited until Boswell had transferred a sample of each to his plate and tested them with a piece of lukewarm bread. 'Good?'

'Most authentic,' Boswell found it in himself to say.

Sedgwick emptied the carafe into their gla.s.ses and called for another. Blackened lamb chops arrived too, and prawns dried up by grilling, withered meatb.a.l.l.s, slabs of smoked ham that could have been used to sole shoes...Boswell was working on a token mouthful of viciously spiced sausage when Sedgwick said 'Know how you could delight us even more?'

Boswell swallowed and had to salve his mouth with half a gla.s.sful of wine. 'Tell me,' he said tearfully.

'Have you enough unpublished stories for a collection?'

'I'd have to write another to bring it up to length.'

'Wait till I let the girls know. Don't think they aren't excited, they were just too overwhelmed by meeting you to show it. Can you call me as soon as you have an idea for the story or the cover?'

'I think I may have both.'

'You're an example to us all. Can I hear?'

'Shadows on a ruined wall. A man and woman and her child, and another man reaching out to them, I'd say in warning. Ruined tenements in the background. Everything overgrown. Even if the story isn't called We Are Tomorrow, the book can be.'

'Shall I give you a bit of advice? Go further than you ever have before. Imagine something you couldn't believe anyone would pay you to write.'

Despite the meal, Boswell felt too elated to imagine that just now. His capacity for observation seemed to have shut down too, and only an increase in the frequency of pa.s.sers-by outside the window roused it. 'What time is it?' he wondered, fumbling his watch upwards on his thin wrist.

'Not much past five,' Sedgwick said, emptying the carafe yet again. 'Still lunchtime.'

'Good G.o.d, if I miss my train I'll have to pay double.'

'Next time we'll see about paying for your travel.' Sedgwick gulped the last of che wine as he threw a credit card on the table to be collected later. 'I wish you'd said you had to leave this early. I'll have Bren send copies of our books to you,' he promised as Boswell panted into Waterloo, and called after him down the steps into the Underground 'Don't forget, imagine the worst. That's what we're for.'

For three hours the worst surrounded Boswell. SIX NATIONS CONTINUE REARMING ... CLIMATE CHANGES ACCELERATE, SAY SCIENTISTS ... SUPERSt.i.tIOUS FANATICISM ON INCREASE ... WOMEN'S GROUPS CHALLENGE ANTI-GUN RULING ... RALLY AGAINST COMPUTER CHIPS IN CRIMINALS ENDS IN VIOLENCE: THREE DEAD, MANY INJURED .. . Far more commuters weren't reading the news than were: many wore headphones that leaked percussion like distant discos in the night, while the sole book to be seen was Page Turner, the latest Turner adventure from Midas Paperbacks, bound in either gold or silver depending, Boswell supposed, on the reader's standards. Sometimes drinking helped him create, but just now a bottle of wine from the buffet to stave off a hangover only froze in his mind the image of the present in ruins and overgrown by the future, of the shapes of a family and a figure poised to intervene printed on the remains of a wall by a flare of painful light. He had to move on from thinking of them as the Aireys and himself, or had he? One reason Jean had left him was that she'd found traces of themselves and April in nearly all his work, even where none was intended; she'd become convinced he was wis.h.i.+ng the worst for her and her child when he'd only meant a warning, by no means mostly aimed at them. His attempts to invent characters wholly unlike them had never convinced her and hadn't improved his work either. He needn't consider her feelings now, he thought sadly. He had to write whatever felt true - the best story he had in him.

It was remaining stubbornly unformed when the train stammered into the terminus. A minibus strewn with drunks and defiant smokers deposited him at the end of his street. He a.s.sumed his house felt empty because of Rod's proposal. Jean had taken much of the furniture they hadn't pa.s.sed on to April, but Boswell still had seats where he needed to sit and folding canvas chairs for visitors, and nearly all his books. He was in the kitchen, brewing coffee while he tore open the day's belated mail, when the phone rang.

He took the handful of bills and the airmail letter he'd saved for last into his workroom, where he sat on the chair April had loved spinning and picked up the receiver. 'Jack Boswell.'

'Jack? They're asleep.'

Presumably this explained why Rod's voice was low. 'Is that an event?' Boswell said.

'It is for April at the moment. She's been out all day looking for work, any work. She didn't want to tell you in case you already had too much on your mind.'

'But now you have.'

'I was hoping things had gone well for you today.'

'I think you can do more than that.'

'Believe me, I'm looking as hard as she is.'

'No, I mean you can a.s.sure her when she wakes that not only do I have a publisher for my two novels and eventually a good chunk of my backlist, but they've asked me to put together a new collection too.'

'Do you mind if I ask for her sake how much they're advancing you?'

'No pounds and no s.h.i.+llings or pence.'

'You're saying they'll pay you in euros?'

'I'm saying they don't pay an advance to me or any of their authors, but they pay royalties every three months.'

'I take it your agent has approved the deal.'

'It's a long time since I've had one of those, and now I'll be ten per cent better off. Do remember I've plenty of experience.'

'I could say the same. Unfortunately it isn't always enough.'

Boswell felt his son-in-law was trying to render him as insignificant as Rod believed science fiction writers ought to be. He tore open the airmail envelope with the little finger of the hand holding the receiver. 'What's that?' Rod demanded.

'No panic. I'm not destroying any of my work,' Boswell told him, and smoothed out the letter to read it again. 'Well, this is timely. The Saskatchewan Conference on Prophetic Literature is giving me the Wendigo Award for a career devoted to envisioning the future.'

'Congratulations. Will it help?'

'It certainly should, and so will the story I'm going to write. Maybe even you will be impressed. Tell April not to let things pull her down,' Boswell said as he rang off, and 'Such as you' only after he had.

Boswell wakened with a hangover and an uneasy sense of some act left unperformed. The image wakened with him: small child holding woman's hand, man beside them, second man gesturing. He groped for the mug of water by the bed, only to find he'd drained it during the night. He stumbled to the bathroom and emptied himself while the cold tap filled the mug. In time he felt equal to yet another breakfast of the kind his doctor had warned him to be content with. Of course, he thought as the sound of chewed bran filled his skull, he should have called Sedgwick last night about the Wendigo Award. How early could he call? Best to wait until he'd worked on the new story. He tried as he washed up the breakfast things and the rest of the plates and utensils in the sink, but his mind seemed as paralysed as the shadows on the wall it kept showing him. Having sat at his desk for a while in front of the wordless screen, he dialled Ca.s.sandra Press.

'h.e.l.lo? Yes?'

'Is that Carole?' Since that earned him no reply, he tried 'Bren?'

'It's Carole. Who is this?'