Ramsey Campbell - 1976 - The Doll Who Ate His Mother (23 page)

 
          
“I
saw it happen,” Edmund said hastily. “I went to St. Joseph’s too.”

 
          
“And
you say he wasn’t a monster? I took him to the doctor, but he was no use at
all. Take him to a psychiatrist, he said. I’d as soon have taken him to the
Satanist; not one of those men believes in God. I swore the doctor to secrecy
and told him everything; then he wasn’t so sure of himself. I told him prayer
and faith were the only things that could save that child, and he couldn’t
prove they weren’t. Not that they saved him. You can’t save a monster.”

 
          
“But
did you let the child see you thought of him that way?”

 
          
“Let
him see, Miss Teacher? I told him! That was cruel of me, wasn’t it? When he
savaged that boy I told him everything. I showed him his mother’s letter.”

 
          
“And
that helped him?”

 
          
“Helped
him? You don’t help a monster, a devil! Don’t you see,” Mrs. Kelly said
triumphantly, “he already knew what he was. I was only showing him I did too.”

 
          
Her
blank eyes flashed with triumph; she smiled bitterly. All at once Clare saw
that she was imitating Bette Davis. She couldn’t stand either of them.

 
          
“No,
I didn’t want to help him. I prayed he’d be saved. But my eyes were getting
worse, and I was alone in the world. All I wanted was to be safe from him. As
you would have, make no mistake. Would you have liked to see him eating with
you at the table, hear him in the next room at night? I used to lie awake
praying, thinking he’d crept into my room. I’m sure my crucifix kept him away.
I’d told him I always carried it with me.

 
          
“Do
you know he was here when I went blind? He’d just left school. He tried to
pretend he wanted to stay home and help me. I had to scream the house down
before he’d go. My throat was sore for days.”

 
          
“Where
is he now, Mrs. Kelly?” Edmund said.

 
          
“I
don’t know.” Her tone was flat; she wasn’t lying. “And I don’t want to. I never
heard from him again, and that suits me fine.”

 
          
“Have
you any idea where he might have gone?”

 
          
“God
only knows. He had no job when he left.
Gone to the Devil,
probably.”

 
          
Edmund
shook his head, baffled. Chris said, “What was the name of the guy you called a
Satanist?”

 
          
Edmund
nodded at Chris, alert. But she said, “Oh, I know that all right. But I’m not
telling you. He died before the police could deal with him. Let him stay
buried.”

 
          
Clare’s
frustration spilled out in a long sigh.

 
          
The
bitter smile turned toward her. “Oh, I’m terribly unreasonable.
The cruel mother who drove her child to suicide, and made another
child into a monster.
Just you listen to me, Miss Teacher. I’ll tell you
how much of a monster he was. I’ll tell you something I never meant to speak of
again. When I collected him from the hospital in Wales, a young nurse took me
aside. She told me there was something they’d kept from me. She told me what
they’d found in the cave.”

 
          
An
orange face nodded forward. Clare recoiled before she recognized Edmund; in the
firelight Chris and George were orange too. On the walls the chairs leapt
feebly, trembling. The room shifted uneasily; firelight reached for the
corners, plucking at them.

 
          
“They
had to cut him out of her. Like a
tumour
,” Mrs. Kelly
said. “The doctors told me that. They found the cord was broken. That shows he
was no part of her, doesn’t it? Broken, or bitten through.

 
          
“He
was born with teeth. Born,” she said, sneering at the word. “And I took him,
even after what the nurse told me.
Because he was
Cissy’s
.
Because I thought my faith would prevail.

 
          
“They
found Cissy in the cave.” Around Clare the orange faces leaned closer. “She was
dead, but they thought they saw a movement under her clothes. They looked, a
woman looked, and there was something moving under her skin. Do you know what
that was?”

 
          
She’s
telling this third-hand, Clare reassured herself. The nurse wasn’t even in the
cave. And this woman exaggerates. But the orange faces surrounded her, and the
voice said, “It was him.
The maggot inside her.
The Devil’s child.”
The voice tore at Mrs. Kelly’s throat as
she said, “It was his mouth. He was eating his way out of his mother.”

 
          
She
preceded them to the front door, saying, “I’d just like to be sure you all
leave.” They heard her voice retreating down the hall. “Out of the depths I
have cried to You, O Lord,” it said.

 
          
Clare
rested her forehead against the corner of the house; brick dug into her
clutching fingers. The street moved as if the darkness were slow water. She
heard Mrs. Kelly’s muffled prayers. She heard George say, “I thought this
witchcraft business was just an excuse for him, the way they find excuses for
everything these days. But maybe they ought to have let him die quietly in that
cave.”

 
          
“I
could give the police her address,” Edmund mused. “But then they’d push me out,
I’m sure of it. I haven’t come so far just to lose the trail.”

 
          
But
he’d lost the trail already, Clare thought. She raised her head. At least she
could think straight, now she was out of the orange light. She stared at the
darkness on the steps beyond the street, stared toward Granby Street,
Mulgrave
Street,
Princes
Avenue. “
Mulgrave
Street,” she said softly to Chris, who was gazing
that way too. He was the only one who might take her sudden intuition
seriously. “I’ll bet that’s where the Satanist lived,” she said.

 
          
Sunday, September 21

 
          
“Do
you know,” Clare said, “I haven’t the faintest idea what we’re looking for.”

 
          
“Maybe
we won’t know until we find it,” Chris said.

 
          
“I
don’t think there’s anything to find.” She halted the car beside St. Joseph’s
and gazed at
Mulgrave
Street. There were fewer houses
than there had been a fortnight ago. “If he did live here,” she said, “they’ve
probably pulled his house down by now. And even if it’s still standing—oh, I
don’t know. I thought we might be able to sense which one it was, but that was
a stupid idea. Even if we found it, what use would it be?”

 
          
“Yeah,
well, it sounds useless. But what else can we do? Let’s go along once more,
okay?”

 
          
She
drove slowly back along
Mulgrave
Street. Terraces and
scraps of terraces stood on the waste; odd single houses were surrounded by
rubble and earth. Toward Upper Parliament Street, hundreds of yards were
enclosed by a wall of corrugated tin. Side streets crossed
Mulgrave
Street; trees still sprouted from their pavements, leaves coated with smoke.
Above the waste the afternoon sky was deep blue, clear except for a waning moon
like the last trace of chalk on a blackboard. At one of the bared crossroads,
two learner drivers juddered timidly at each other.

 
          
Clare
halted Ringo at Upper Parliament Street. “Shall we call it a day?” she said.

 
          
“Yeah,
might as well.” But he was squirming on the seat in frustration. “Let’s get a
coffee,” he said abruptly. “The Arts Centre isn’t far.”

 
          
But
the building contained a couple of morose artists, annoyed by the interruption;
no coffee—it had gone on a picnic. “We’ll go back to my place,” Clare said.

 
          
In
Blackburne
Terrace, birds fell from trees and swooped
back onto branches, like fruit taking back its fall on a reversed film. She was
unlocking the flat before she remembered how untidy it was. Perhaps Chris
wouldn’t notice.

 
          
He
wasn’t even following her. He’d stopped on the last but top stair, looking
disconsolate. “Shit, I don’t feel like I’ve done anything today,” he said.

 
          
“I’m
sorry,” she said. The search had been her idea, though he’d joined her readily
enough. “We did our best.” She went to him, put one arm about his shoulders;
she could feel how tense he was. “I think this whole business may just peter
out as far as we’re concerned,” she said.

 
          
She
massaged his shoulders. “At least we’ll have seen the last of Edmund,” she
said, as he relaxed a little. “He wanted me to write to the Education Offices
on school notepaper. They might know where Kelly went after he left school. But
I’m afraid I won’t go that far, even though I said I’d help him. So Edmund and
I aren’t friends anymore. Still, I think I’ll get over that. Come on,” for he
felt softer now, “I’ll make some coffee.”

 
          
God,
it was untidy. Love Has Many Weapons, of which she’d read six slickly written
pages, had joined the scattered newspapers and crossword books, the children’s
essays, her class record book, the canvas guitar case lying partly folded like
a Dali version of George, a mug swarming with tea leaves, a paragraph about Rob
that she’d written and rewritten for Edmund. She stood gazing, depressed.

 
          
“What’s
wrong?” Chris said, rather irritably.

 
          
“Oh, nothing.”
These things generally didn’t mean so much to
men. “I just wanted you to see the place looking nice. Not this mess.”

 
          
“Christ,
don’t worry about that. You should see mine.”

 
          
“I
hope I shall.” She hadn’t known she was going to say that. Her heart quickened
with the shock. When he didn’t answer she fled to the kitchen, saying, “I’ll
get the coffee.”

 
          
She
felt foolish. Why had she fled? From Chris, of all people! Embarrassment was
the last thing she should feel with him; it was the last thing he would feel.
She considered her impressions of him: vulnerability, innocence; he needed
looking after sometimes. And loyalty—he’d held back the discussion at the
Pughs
’ for her. “You know,” she called, “you’re a lot like
my brother was, in some ways.”

 
          
“Yeah?”
But no, she thought, not really. He hadn’t Rob’s
aggressive
unsureness
, his self-pity—the things her
disloyal mind had kept presenting when she’d tried to write her memories for
Edmund. It was more that her relationship with Chris reminded her of Rob.

 
          
Why?
Because she looked after him, because he was loyal to her?
That hadn’t been the basis of her relationship with Rob. She had realized that
halfway through a sentence for Edmund, as her senile, incontinent Biro had
stained her fingers. Rob hadn’t needed her half so much as she had needed him.
She’d needed him to fend off other people.

 
          
She’d
needed him to blame for spoiling her chances with men. That was why, in her
years away from him at teacher-training college, she’d never gone out with men
at all. And in fact he’d shielded her from nothing except the fact of her own
unsureness
, her self-dislike. She had even managed to blame
him for her dislike, her jealousy, of poor Dorothy.

 
          
None
of these insights had seemed like a revelation. She’d sat calmly, Biro in hand,
gazing into herself as they slotted easily into her awareness.
Her
mind had known all the time, had been waiting for the
chance to let her know.

 
          
Chris
had given it the chance. She had never felt so much at her ease with anyone,
not even with Rob. Chris made all that had happened worthwhile. She mustn’t
lose him now the search was ending.