Shadow Show: All-New Stories in Celebration of Ray Bradbury (24 page)

Ray Bradbury’s work has personally given me tremendous happiness. In “Bedtime Machine,” I am the boy who appears first, and who gleefully asks to be read to. What great memories I have of fabulous stories such as “The Lake,” “The Jar,” “The Fog Horn,” “The Scythe,” “There Will Come Soft Rains,” and so many, many more.

Live forever? Certainly Bradbury will, and his amazing work will continue to speak to the heart as long as hearts beat with passion, emotion, and pure joy upon this earth.

—Robert McCammon

THE PAGE

Ramsey Campbell

T
hat day the Aegean might have been a nest of dragons with teeth of white foam. The leaping waves were scaly bodies blue as metal, and the noonday sunlight lent them glittering reptile eyes. The wind from the sea was their breath so hot it turned its spittle into a desiccated spray of sand. “The dragons are back, Joyce,” Ewan said.

“That’s right, dear.”

He couldn’t tell if she recalled her flight of fancy here on the beach all those years ago or was simply humouring him. Perhaps she hadn’t even heard him for the wind, which flapped his shirt and her long silken shawl on the backs of the sunbeds as though equipping the couple with wings. It had already felled several umbrellas, strewing them alongside the tideless sea. Just a few determined tourists were staying on the beach, fat novels clamped open in front of their faces with both hands, while the most adventurous souls braved the waves. Surely Joyce wouldn’t, and Ewan was sinking back with an obese best-seller when he heard a cry. “Stop there, stop.”

The voice was almost indistinguishable from the wind. Ewan had to sit up to locate the man, who’d dashed onto the beach at the westward end of Ikonikos, where the sunbeds gave out and the clusters of clifftop apartments fell short of a few isolated villas. The wind tugged a linen suit taut on the man’s thin frame and made an unruly halo out of his white hair. He was chasing a page that the wind must have torn out of a book. “Joyce,” Ewan said.

She peered at him while the wind disarranged the greyest of her locks before hitching herself around on the sunbed. “What do you want me to see?”

“It was just a chap running after a bit of his book.”

The man and his papery game had disappeared around the rocks that screened the next inlet, and Joyce settled back with a sigh. “That wasn’t worth it, Ewan.”

He would rather feel accused than risk emphasising the effort she’d had to make. He was silent as she retrieved her book, which needed to diet as much as his did. The wind tousled the pages, and before long Joyce let her novel drop on her venerable canvas bag. “I’m going in.”

On days like this Ewan was all the more aware of never having learned to swim. “I wouldn’t mind some lunch.”

“Don’t you ever think of anything except your stomach?” Joyce gave the sagging bulge a wearily indulgent glance. “Jump up, then,” she said. “Give it a chance to behave.”

No doubt she meant the weather. Ewan struggled to his feet and managed to wriggle into his playfully fluttering shirt in time to offer Joyce his arm. She mustn’t want to seem to need it, since she let go too soon, almost falling on if not across the bed. “I can manage,” she protested when he clutched her yielding waist, and wouldn’t let him carry the bag.

At least the Philosophia was just above their section of the beach. The waiters had lowered a plastic sheet to protect the taverna from the wind. The sheet blurred the view like a cataract and palpitated loudly throughout the meal. Joyce helped finish several dishes and more than half of the carafe of wine, by which time the sea was rearing as fiercely as ever. “Will you get the towels?” she said. “I think I’ll have a nap.”

Once she would have done so on the beach. Ewan retrieved the towels and clambered up the unequal steps embedded in the cliff. On the road that had sprouted apartments and hotels since the couple had last stayed in Ikonikos, Joyce took his hand. He suspected she needed more support than she would admit on the uphill road.

The Mnemosyne Apartments were near the middle of the village. Children too young for school or absent from one were keeping the play area beside the bar alive. Ewan knew Joyce hoped to see the grandchildren there or somewhere similar. As he fumbled in the bag he experienced the familiar panic at losing a key. “For heaven’s sake let me,” Joyce complained.

She took longer than he already had. A good deal of heat was occupying their room. Ewan switched on the air-conditioning as Joyce lay down. She reached out a hand for him to squeeze while he took his place on the other narrow bed. As soon as he closed his eyes he saw the man chasing the page along the beach. How important had it been? Had its owner recaptured it? The questions kept sleep well out of reach, and before long Ewan swung his legs off the bed. “I’m just going out. You rest.”

Joyce put out a slack hand and thought of opening her eyes. “Can’t you wait for me?”

“I only want to try and find the shop that had our favourite olives.”

She released a breath so protracted he heard it begin to give out—the kind that always made him breathless until he heard another. “Don’t be long,” she eventually said.

He didn’t mean to be. They weren’t often apart now that they’d retired, but whenever they were he grew anxious until he saw her again. She stirred as he let a blaze of sunlight in. The sight of her frail shape under the thin sheet was dismayingly suggestive of a memory he was trying to commit to mind. “Go if you’re going,” she mumbled, and he had to close the door.

He made for the cliff path where the running man had come from. In the past the dusty roads had boasted just a few tavernas, but now those were outnumbered by bars full of Brits watching football on huge flat screens like paintings brought to life. The wind had ripped blossoms from trees and shrubs and vines, strewing the roads with them—even cactus flowers had been torn loose, and the spiky clubs of leaves. The spectacle put Ewan in mind of the wake of a parade—not of a funeral, not that kind of wake.

He couldn’t see the man at any of the villas outside Ikonikos, all of which were white as tombs and gave as little sign of life. Instinct, if even that, took him down the cliff path. The sea was still helplessly restless, although at the horizon it appeared to be promising peace. The wind drove Ewan along the beach and unfurled veils of sand for him to walk on. Beyond the rocky outcrop the next bay was unpopulated. Nothing moved except the waves and, trapped by the wind in a crevice of the cliff, a lively piece of paper.

Ewan picked his way to it as the wind set it beckoning. More than once his sandals missed a foothold on the slippery rocks, so that he was afraid of twisting an ankle or worse. His bare legs were stinging with sand and salt spray by the time he grabbed the piece of paper. It was the last page of a book called
Sending Them to God
.

Other than the title it contained just four words: “but there is none.” Why had the man been so desperate to retrieve it? How reassured would he have felt if he had? The words had no such effect on Ewan, who was inclined to give the page back to the wind. He might encounter the man, and he slipped it into his shirt pocket. He was peering at some odd marks in the crevice—they looked as if fingers had been groping ineffectually for the page, though they must have been made by the wind on the sand that was plastered to the cliff face—when the phone in his hip pocket emitted a clank. The message was from Joyce.
where
, it said.

Coming back
. Ewan typed this as swiftly as he could without misspelling, and added
Thought asleep
. Even using less than complete sentences felt like abandoning responsibility—the kind they’d both shown while they were teaching. As he sent the message he wondered if Joyce could have been asking where she was. Surely neither of them had reached that state yet, if they ever would, but the thought revived his panic at being separated from her. He would have dashed up the cliff path if he’d felt capable. Instead he struggled into the wind along the beach.

As he opened the apartment door Joyce turned over beneath the sheet to welcome him—but her bed was empty, and the sheet was stirring in the wind. Ewan managed to postpone some of his consternation while he lurched across the room. She was on the balcony, gazing between two hotels at the sea. “Were you successful?” she said.

“I didn’t find the shop.” For fear of straying any further from the truth he said “I found the page the chap was after on the beach.”

Joyce sighed and turned her hands up as though weighing the wind. “What do you think you have to prove to me, Ewan?”

“What would you like me to?”

“Don’t make it sound as if it’s my fault.”

They were on the edge of the kind of argument that would take them beyond knowing where it had begun. Perhaps Joyce saw this, because she said “Show me what’s so important, then.”

She seemed indifferent to holding the page safe and gave it an unimpressed glance before letting Ewan retrieve it from her and the wind. “I don’t see how that could mean much to anyone.”

“I’ll keep it with me in case we see him.”

“You aren’t going to spend our holiday looking when I don’t suppose he even cares about it anymore.”

“I won’t be taking time to look for him.”

“You did for that and never even told me you were.” Before Ewan could think of an answer to risk she said “I was looking forward to those olives.”

He should have realised this might be important to her when so much else had changed. “We’ll look for them together.”

They tried on their way to dinner. Perhaps the shop had turned into one that sold leather or T-shirts or silver or trinkets, some of them Greek. Several tavernas had become Chinese or Indian for the benefit or otherwise of British visitors. Last night Joyce and Ewan had located an old favourite, but the years appeared to have shrunk the portions and dried up the food while extracting much of its taste. The wind dropped as they decided which taverna to chance. The slitted sun peered like a dragon’s solitary eye over the horizon, and a final breath ruffled the sea.

They were right to trust the restaurant, but Ewan felt Joyce didn’t trust him. Whenever he glanced at passersby she gave him a sharp look. He did his best to talk about places they could revisit, though the discussion felt like a show they were performing, a sketch of a marriage. Later they sat on their balcony as the sky grew stars. Two nearby discos were competing at full volume, and Ewan couldn’t grasp the peace the sky seemed to offer. When he and Joyce retreated into the apartment, the thumping beyond the window sounded even more like a pair of irregular hearts.

He waited until Joyce drew the sheet over herself before he hid the page beneath his pillow. Some instinct, unless it was just an effect of the retsina at dinner, made him feel he should keep the page safe. He switched off the light and found Joyce’s hand. When it slackened he turned over. The wind fumbling about the balcony didn’t keep him awake, and the disco beats seemed to fade into the distance. When he drifted out of sleep they’d fallen silent, leaving the wind to make what little noise it could. It wasn’t the wind, since it sounded closer to him than the window, which he saw under the curtains was shut tight. The hint of activity wasn’t enough to rouse him, but perhaps it disturbed Joyce, since as he settled back into slumber she tried to take his hand. He might have imagined the wind was attempting to do so, and how could she have found the hand when it was resting on his pillow, closer to the window than to her? Before the sensation was able to grow more substantial it left him, and he lacked the energy to drag himself awake.

Hours later the impression wakened him in daylight. Who had been groping at the pillow? He sat up and twisted around to lift it. The last page of the book was lying slightly crumpled on the wrinkly sheet, but he couldn’t judge whether the page or the pillow had already been moved. Joyce levered herself up on a shaky elbow to gaze at him. “Why were you keeping that there?”

“So I knew where it was.”

She might think him forgetful or worse, if she didn’t assume he was making sure she didn’t steal the page. He limped to the safe and locked up the page with the passports and travellers’ cheques. “Now we know where it is.”

During breakfast on the balcony a pair of magpies did most of the chattering. Joyce was first onto the beach, having let go of Ewan’s arm, and soon in the sea. He was grateful to see other swimmers near her in case she needed help. Between looking for her in her swimsuit as orange as a sunset he tried to immerse himself in the novel at least two other people were reading on the beach, but even once Joyce returned he couldn’t concentrate. “Will you be all right for a while?” he eventually said. “I just want to look something up.”

“Why shouldn’t I be?”

He glanced back until he could no longer see her as he made for Zorba’s Bar. A few customers were drinking beer with their English breakfasts while their children played on computers. Ewan bought time on a terminal and searched the Internet for
Sending Them to God,
but there was very little information. The novel was by Jethro Dartmouth, a name that meant nothing to him. It seemed to be the author’s only work, and nobody was offering a copy for sale online. Insurgery Books, who had published it at the end of the previous century, no longer existed—they appeared to have brought out just that book.

This wasn’t much for Ewan to tell Joyce or to justify leaving her alone on the beach. He took his time on the road but failed to think of anything to add. The concrete grew soft underfoot with the ragged rug of sand that yesterday’s gale had spread over the end of the road. Joyce was on the beach to his left—she ought to be, but he couldn’t see her.

Nobody seemed interested in his panic as he stumbled between the sunbeds. There was his meaningless book, a lump of paper lying inert on the bed draped with his towel, and within arm’s length of it Joyce’s paperback occupied her empty lounger in the shadow of the umbrella. He was staring apprehensively at the swimmers in the sea, none of whom was wearing orange, when somewhere above him her voice said “Ewan.”