Piranha to Scurfy (7 page)

What he really should have done was add a P.S. to the effect that he would appreciate a prompt acknowledgment of his letter. Just a line saying something like “Please be kind enough to acknowledge receipt.” However, it was too late now. Kingston Marle’s publisher would get his letter tomorrow and send it straight on. Ribbon knew publishers did not always do this, but surely in the case of so eminent an author and one of the most profitable on their list...

Sending the letter should have allayed his fears, but they seemed to crowd in upon him more urgently, jostling each other for preeminence in his mind.The man who had followed him along Bishopsgate, for instance. Of course he knew it had not been Kingston Marle, yet the similarity of build, of feature, of height between the two men was too great for coincidence. The most likely explanation was that his stalker was Marle’s younger brother, and now, as he reached this reasonable conclusion, Ribbon no longer saw the man’s eyes as mild but as sly and crafty. When his letter came Marle would call his brother off but, in the nature of things, the letter could not arrive at Marle’s home before Wednesday at the earliest. Then there was the matter of The Book itself. The drawer in which it lay failed to hide it adequately. It was part of a mahogany cabinet (one of Mummy’s wedding presents, Ribbon believed), well polished but of course opaque.Yet sometimes the wood seemed to become transparent and the harsh reds and glaring silver of
Demogorgon
shine through it as he understood a block of radium would appear as a glowing cuboid behind a wall of solid matter. Approaching closely, creeping up on it, he would see the bright colors fade and the woodwork reappear, smooth, shiny, and
ordinary
once more.

In the study upstairs on Monday evening he tried to do some work, but his eye was constantly drawn to the window and what lay beyond. He became convinced that the bushes on the lawn had moved.That small thin one had surely stood next to the pair of tall fat ones, not several yards away. Since the night before it had shifted its position, taking a step nearer to the house. Drawing the curtains helped, but after a while he got up and pulled them apart a little to check on the big round bush, to see if it had taken a step farther or had returned to its previous position. It was where it had been ten minutes before. All should have been well, but it was not. The room itself had become uncomfortable, and he resolved not to go back there, to move the computer downstairs, until he had heard from Kingston Marle.

The doorbell ringing made him jump so violently he felt pain travel through his body and reverberate. Immediately he thought of Marle’s brother. Suppose Marle’s brother, a strong young man, was outside the door and when it was opened would force his way in? Or, worse, was merely checking that Ribbon was at home and, when footsteps sounded inside, intended to disappear? Ribbon went down. He took a deep breath and threw the door open. His caller was Glenys Next-door.

Marching in without being invited, she said, “Hiya, Amby” and explained that Tinks Next-door was missing. The cat had not been home since the morning, when he was last seen by Sandra On-the-other-side sitting in Ribbon’s front garden eating a bird.

“I’m out of my mind with worry, as you can imagine, Amby.”

As a matter of fact, he couldn’t. Ribbon cared very little for songbirds, but he cared for feline predators even less. “I’ll let you know if I come across him. However”—he laughed lightly—“he knows he’s not popular with me, so he makes himself scarce.”

This was the wrong thing to say. In the works of his less literate authors Ribbon sometimes came upon the expression
to bridle:
“she bridled” or even “the young woman bridled.” At last he understood what it meant. Glenys Next-door tossed her head, raised her eyebrows, and looked down her nose at him.

“I’m sorry for you, Amby, I really am.You must find that attitude problem of yours a real hang-up. I mean socially. I’ve tried to ignore it all these years, but there comes a time when one has to speak one’s mind. No, don’t bother, please, I can see myself out.”

This was not going to be a
good
night. He knew that before he switched the bedside light off. For one thing, he always read in bed before going to sleep. Always had and always would. But for some reason he had forgotten to take
Destiny’s Suzerain
upstairs with him, and though his bedroom was full of reading matter, shelves and shelves of it, he had read all the books before. Of course he could have gone downstairs and fetched himself a book, or even just gone into the study, which was lined with books. Booked, not papered, indeed. He
could
have done so, in theory he could have, but on coming into his bedroom he had locked the door. Why? He was unable to answer that question, though he put it to himself several times. It was a small house, potentially brightly lit, in a street of a hundred and fifty such houses, all populated. A dreadful feeling descended upon him as he lay in bed that if he unlocked that door, if he turned the key and opened it, something would come in. Was it the small thin bush that would come in? These thoughts, ridiculous, unworthy of him, puerile, frightened him so much that he put the bedside lamp on and left it on till morning.

Tuesday’s post brought two letters. Eric Owlberg called Ribbon “a little harsh” and informed him that printers do not always do as they are told. Jeanne Pettle’s letter was from a secretary who wrote that Ms. Pettle was away on an extended publicity tour but would certainly attend to his “interesting communication” when she returned. There was nothing from Dillon’s. It was a bright sunny day. Ribbon went into the study and contemplated the garden. The shrubs were, of course, where they had always been. Or where they had been before the large round bush stepped back into its original position?

“Pull yourself together,” Ribbon said aloud.

Housework day. He started, as he always did, in Mummy’s room, dusting the picture rail and the central lamp with a bunch of pink and blue feathers attached to a rod, and the ornaments with a clean fluffy yellow duster. The numerous books he took out and dusted on alternate weeks, but this was not one of those. He vacuumed the carpet, opened the window wide, and replaced the pink silk nightdress with a pale blue one. He always washed Mummy’s nightdresses by hand once a fortnight. Next his own room and the study, then downstairs to the dining and front rooms. Marle’s publisher would have received his letter by the first post this morning and the department that looked after this kind of thing would, even at this moment probably, be readdressing the envelope and sending it on. Ribbon had no idea where the man lived. London? Devonshire? Most of those people seemed to live in the Cotswolds; its green hills and lush valleys must be chock-full of them. But perhaps Shropshire was more likely. He had written about Montpellier Hall as if he really knew such a house.

Ribbon dusted the mahogany cabinet and passed on to Mummy’s little sewing table, but he couldn’t quite leave things there, and he returned to the cabinet, to stand, duster in hand, staring at that drawer. It was not transparent on this sunny morning and nothing could be seen glowing in its depths. He pulled it open suddenly and snatched up The Book. He looked at its double redness and at the pentagram. After his experiences of the past days he wouldn’t have been surprised if the bandaged face inside had changed its position, closed its mouth or moved its eyes. Well, he would have been surprised—he’d have been horrified, aghast. But the demon was the same as ever; The Book was just the same, an ordinary, rather tastelessly jacketed cheap thriller.

“What on earth is the matter with me?” Ribbon said to The Book.

He went out shopping for food. Sandra On-the-other-side appeared behind him in the queue at the checkout. “You’ve really upset Glenys,” she said. “You know me, I believe in plain speaking, and in all honesty I think you ought to apologize.”

“When I want your opinion I’ll ask for it, Mrs. Wilson,” said Ribbon.

Marle’s brother got on the bus and sat behind him. It wasn’t actually Marle’s brother; he only thought it was, just for a single frightening moment. It was amazing really what a lot of people there were about who looked like Kingston Marle, men and women too. He had never noticed it before, had never had an inkling of it until he came face to face with Marle in that bookshop. If only it were possible to go back. For the moving finger, having writ, not to move on but to retreat, retrace its strokes, white them out with correction fluid and begin writing again. He would have guessed why that silly woman, his cousin’s wife, was so anxious to get to Blackwell’s; her fondness for Marle’s works—distributed so tastelessly all over his bedroom—would have told him, and he would have cried off the Oxford trip, first warning her on no account to let Marle know her surname. Yet—and this was undeniable—Marle had Ribbon’s home address, since the address was on the letter. The moving finger would have to go back a week and erase “21 Grove Green Avenue, London E11 4ZH” from the top right-hand corner of his letter.Then, and only then, would he have been safe ...

Sometimes a second post arrived on a weekday, but none came that day. Ribbon took his shopping bags into the kitchen, unpacked them, went into the front room to open the window—and saw
Demogorgon
lying on the coffee table. A violent trembling convulsed him. He sat down, closed his eyes. He
knew
he hadn’t taken it out of the drawer. Why on earth would he? He hated it. He wouldn’t touch it unless he had to. There was not much doubt now that it had a life of its own. Some kind of kinetic energy lived inside its covers, the same sort of thing that moved the small thin bush across the lawn at night. Kingston Marle put that energy into objects, he infused them with it, he was a sorcerer whose powers extended far beyond his writings and his fame. Surely that was the only explanation why a writer of such appallingly bad books, misspelled, the grammar nonexistent, facts awry, should enjoy such a phenomenal success, not only with an ignorant illiterate public but among the cognoscenti. He practiced sorcery or was himself one of the demons he wrote about, an evil spirit living inside that hideous lantern-jawed exterior.

Ribbon reached out a slow wavering hand for The Book and found that, surely by chance, he had opened it at page 423. Shrinking while he did so, holding The Book almost too far away from his eyes to see the words, he read of Charles Ambrose’s wedding night, of his waking in the half-dark with Kayra sleeping beside him and seeing the curled-up shape of the demon in the corner of the room.... So Marle had called off his necromancer’s power, had he? He had restored the ending to what it originally was. Nothing about Mummy’s death and burial, nothing about the walking tree. Did that mean he had already received Ribbon’s apology? It might mean that. His publisher had hardly had time to send the letter on, but suppose Marle, for some reason—and the reason would be his current publicity tour—had been in his publisher’s office and the letter had been handed to him. It was the only explanation, it fitted the facts. Marle had read his letter, accepted his apology, and, perhaps with a smile of triumph, whistled back whatever dogs of the occult carried his messages.

Ribbon held The Book in his hands. Everything might be over now, but he still didn’t want it in the house. Carefully, he wrapped it up in newspaper, slipped the resulting parcel into a plastic carrier, tied the handles together, and dropped it in the waste bin. “Let it get itself out of that,” he said aloud. “Just let it try.” Was he imagining that a fetid smell came from it, swathed in plastic though it was? He splashed disinfectant into the waste bin, opened the kitchen window.

He sat down in the front room and opened
Tales My Lover Told Me,
but he couldn’t concentrate. The afternoon grew dark; there was going to be a storm. For a moment he stood at the window, watching the clouds gather, black and swollen.When he was a little boy Mummy had told him a storm was the clouds fighting. It was years since he had thought of that, and now, remembering, for perhaps the first time in his life he questioned Mummy’s judgment. Was it quite right so to mislead a child?

The rain came, sheets of it blown by the huge gale that arose. Ribbon wondered if Marle, among his many accomplishments, could raise a wind, strike lightning from some diabolical tinderbox and, like Jove himself, beat the drum of thunder. Perhaps. He would believe anything of that man now. He went around the house closing all the windows. The one in the study he closed, then fastened the catches. From his own bedroom window he looked at the lawn, where the bushes stood as they had always stood, unmoved, immovable, lashed by rain, whipping and twisting in the wind. Downstairs, in the kitchen, the window was wide open, flapping back and forth, and the waste bin had fallen on its side. The parcel lay beside it, the plastic bag that covered it, the newspaper inside, torn as if a scaly paw had ripped it. Other rubbish—food scraps, a sardine can—were scattered across the floor.

Ribbon stood transfixed. He could see the red-and-silver jacket of The Book gleaming, almost glowing, under its torn wrappings.What had come through the window? Was it possible the demon, unleashed by Marle, was now beyond his control? He asked the question aloud, he asked Mummy, though she was long gone. The sound of his own voice, shrill and horror-stricken, frightened him. Had whatever it was come in to retrieve the— he could hardly put it even into silent words—the
chronicle of its exploits?
Nonsense, nonsense. It was Mummy speaking, Mummy telling him to be strong, not to be a fool. He shook himself, gritted his teeth. He picked up the parcel, dropped it into a black rubbish bag, and took it into the garden, getting very wet in the process. In the wind the biggest bush of all reached out a needly arm and lashed him across the face.

He left the black bag there. He locked all the doors, and even when the storm had subsided and the sky cleared he kept all the windows closed. Late that night, in his bedroom, he stared down at the lawn. The Book in its bag was where he had left it, but the small thin bush had moved, in a different direction this time, stepping to one side so that the two fat bushes, the one that had lashed him and its twin, stood close together and side by side like tall, heavily built men gazing up at his window. Ribbon had saved half a bottle of Mummy’s sleeping pills. For an emergency, for a rainy day. All the lights blazing, he went into Mummy’s room, found the bottle, and swallowed two pills. They took effect rapidly. Fully clothed, he fell onto his bed and into something more like a deep trance than sleep. It was the first time in his life he had ever taken a soporific.