The Collected Short Fiction of Ramsey Campbell Part 69

"I'm not making you. I was jum, just wondering. That is, I'm speaking on behalf of Face to Face Communications."

"That's what you call this, is it?"

"No, that's what I'm saying. I wish we could see each other face to face."

"Do you now?"

Speke's gaze darted from the line of ink to the screen, where the flickering had intensified. "Why?" said the voice.

"Because then I'd see if you lum, if you look, if you don't just sound like-" Speke gabbled before he managed to slam the handset into place.

He kept his head down until he couldn't resist glancing up. Though Mrs s.h.i.+llingsworth wasn't watching him he was convinced that she had been. He repeated the next number out loud and moved the directory another half an inch, another quarter, another eighth. Something was close to making itself clear: the digits beneath the ink or the restlessness on the screen? He keyed the numbers he was muttering and glanced up, down, up, down... "p.o.r.ne," a voice said in his ear.

"My name is Roger and I wonder-"

"p.o.r.ne."

"I wonder what number I've called."

"Ours. p.o.r.ne."

That was the name in the directory, but Speke suspected that he had inadvertently keyed the numbers which perhaps, for an instant too brief for him to have been conscious of it, had been visible through the line of ink. "Don't I know you?" he said.

"Where from?"

"From in here," Speke said, tapping his forehead and baring his teeth at the screen, where his grin appeared as a whitish line like an exposed bone in the midst of a pale blur. "I expect you wish you could see my face."

"Why, what are you doing with it?"

Speke stuffed the topmost form into the edges of the screen, because each flicker seemed to render his reflection less like his. "Don't you think that your name says a lot?" he said.

"What do you mean by that, young man?"

"You're a woman, aren't you? But not as old as you want me to think."

"How dare you! Let me speak to your supervisor!"

"How did you know I've got one? You gave yourself away there, didn't you? And since when has it been an insult to tell a woman she isn't as old as she seems? Sounds to me as if you've got something to hide, Mrs or Miss."

"Why, you young-"

"Not so young. Not so old either. Same age as you, as a matter of fact, as if you didn't know."

"Who do you imagine you're talking to? Charles, come here and speak to this, this-"

"It's Charles now, is it? Too posh for that ape," Speke said, and fitted the handset into its niche while he read the next number. He fastened his gaze on the digits and touch-typed them on the handset, and lifted the form with which he had covered the screen. His grin was still there amid the restless flickering; the sight made him feel as though a mask had been clipped to his face. He let the page fall, and a voice which felt closer than his ear to him said "Posing."

"Who is?"

"This is Miss Posing speaking."

"Why do you keep answering the phone with just a name? Do you really expect me to believe anyone has names like those?"

"Who is this?"

"You already asked me that two calls ago. Or are you asking if I know who you are? Belum-"

Mrs s.h.i.+llingsworth was staring at him. He hadn't realised he was speaking loud enough for her to overhear, even if his was the only voice he could hear in the crowded room. The panic which overwhelmed him seemed to flood into his past, so that he was immediately convinced that every voice he'd spoken to on the phone was the same voice, not just tonight but earlier- how much earlier, he would rather not think. "Thanks anyway," he said at the top of his voice, both to a.s.sure Mrs s.h.i.+llingsworth that nothing was wrong and to blot out the chorus around him, which had apparently begun to chant "I'm speaking" in unison. The only voice he wanted to hear, was desperate to hear, was Stef's. He couldn't remember the number. He stared at the flickering line of black ink while he thumbed through the wad of corners. As soon as he'd glimpsed the number, which now he saw was in the same position as the line of ink, he let the directory fall back to the page from which he was meant to be working. He pulled a form towards him and poised his pen above it as he typed the digits, resisting the urge to grin at Mrs s.h.i.+llingsworth to persuade her this wasn't a private call. He had barely entered the number when the closest voice so far said "S & V Studios."

"Stef?"

"Hang on." As the voice receded from the earpiece it seemed to retreat into Speke's skull. "Vanessa, is Stefanie still here?"

"Just gone."

"Just gone, apparently. Is there a message?"

"I've already got it," Speke said through his fixed grin.

"I'm sorry?"

"You're forgetting to disguise your voice," Speke said and, dropping the handset into its niche, leaned on it until he felt it was secure. "I'm speaking," said a voice, then another. All the screens around him appeared to be flickering in unison, taking their time from the pulse of the line of black ink on the page in front of him. He shoved himself backwards, his chair colliding with the desk behind him, and was on his feet before Mrs. s.h.i.+llingsworth looked up. He didn't trust himself to speak; he waggled his fingers at his crotch to indicate that he was heading for the toilet. As soon as the door of the long room closed behind him he dashed out of the building to his car.

He drove home so fast that the figures on the pavements seemed to merge like the frames of a film. He parked as close to the entrance as he could and sprinted the few yards, his shadows sprouting out of him. He wasn't conscious of the number he keyed, but it opened the door. The lift displayed each floor to him, and he wished he'd thought to count them, because when he lurched out of the box it seemed to him that the room numbers in the corridors were too high. He threw himself between the closing doors and jabbed the b.u.t.ton for his floor, and the doors shook open; he was on the right level after all. He floundered into the corridor, unlocked his door, and stumbled into the dark which it closed in with him. He was rus.h.i.+ng blindly to the bar when the doorbell rang behind him. He raced back and b.u.mped into the door, yelling "Yes?"

"Me."

Speke shoved his eye against the spyhole. Outside was a doll with Stef's face on its swollen head. "Haven't you got your k.u.m?" he shouted. "Can't you see I've got my hands full? Didn't you see me flas.h.i.+ng my lights when you were driving? I've been right behind you for the last I don't know how long."

"I saw some flickering in the mirror" Speke seemed to recall.

"That was me. Well, are you going to open the door or don't you want to see my face?"

"That's a strange way to put it," Speke said and found himself backing away from a fear that he would be letting in the doll with her face on its bulbous outsize head. He wasn't fast enough. His hand reached out and turned the latch, and there was Stef, posing with armfuls of groceries against the blank backdrop of the corridor. He grabbed the bags from her and dumped them in the kitchen, then he fled to the bar. "Drink," he heard his voice say, and fed himself a mouthful from the nearest bottle before switching on the light and calling "Drink?"

She didn't come for it. He traced her to the kitchen by the order in which the lights came on. "Have something to eat if you're going to drink," she said as she accepted the gla.s.s. "It's in the microwave."

The sight on the screen of the microwave oven of a plastic container rotating on the turntable like some new kind of record sent him back to the bar. He was still there when Stef switched on the main light in the room and wheeled the trolley in. "Roger, what's-"

He interrupted her so as not to be told that something was wrong. "Who's called Lesley where you work?"

"Leslie's one of the sound men. You've heard me mention him."

"Sound, is he, and that's all?" Speke mused, and raised his voice. "How about Vanessa?"

"Roger..."

"Not Roger, Vanessa."

Stef loaded his plate with vegetarian pasta and gazed at him until he took it. "You told me there was no such name before some writer made it up."

"There is now."

"Not where I work."

Speke's voice appeared to have deserted him. He made appreciative noises through mouthfuls of pasta while he tried to think what to say. By the time Stef brought the ice cream he was well into his second bottle of wine, and it no longer seemed important to recall what he'd been attempting to grasp. Indeed, he couldn't understand why she kept looking concerned for him.

He'd taken his expansive contentment to bed when a thought began to flicker in his skull. "Stef?"

"I'm asleep."

"Of course you aren't," he said, rearing up over her to make sure. "You said we agreed. Who? Who are we?"

Without opening her eyes Stef said "What are you talking about, Roger?"

"About us, aren't I, or am I?" He had to turn away. Perhaps it was an effect of the flickering dimness, but her upturned face seemed almost as flat as the pillow which framed it. He closed his eyes, and presumably the flickering subsided when at last he fell asleep.

Was that the phone? He awoke with a shrill memory filling his skull. He was alone in bed, and the daylight already looked stale. When the bell shrilled again he kicked away the sheets which had been drawn flat over him, and blundered along the hall to the intercom by the front door. "Spum," he declared.

"We've brought your videphone, boss."

The flickering recommenced at once. Speke ran into the main room and, wrestling the window along its track, peered down. Fifteen floors below, two tufts of hair with arms and legs were unloading cartons from a van. They vanished into the entranceway, and a moment later the bell rang again. Speke sprinted to the intercom and shouted "I can't see you now. Go away."

"You asked for us now, it says so here," said the distorted voice. "When do you want us?"

"Never. It could all be fake. You can do anything with sound and vision," Speke protested before he fully realised what he was saying. He rushed back to the open window and watched until the walking scalps returned to the van, then he grabbed enough clothes to cover himself and heard rather than felt the door slam behind him.

He couldn't drive for the flickering. The floors of the tower block had seemed like frames of a stuck film, and now the figures he pa.s.sed on the pavements of the carriageway resembled images in a film advancing slowly, frame by frame. The film of cars on the road was faster. The side of the carriageway on which he was walking forked, leading him into a diminis.h.i.+ng perspective of warehouses. On one otherwise blank wall he found a metal plaque which, as he approached, filled with whitish daylight out of which the legend S & V Studios took form. He leaned all his weight on the colourless door, which seemed insubstantial by comparison with the thick wall, and staggered into a room composed of four monochrome faces as tall as the indirectly lit brick ceiling. A young woman was sitting at a wide low desk with her back to one actor's flat face. "May I help you?" she said.

"Vanessum?" Speke said, distracted by trying to put names to the faces. "Yes?" she said as though he'd caught her out. "Who are you?"

"Don't tell me you don't know."

"I only started properly this morning," she said, pus.h.i.+ng a visitor's book towards him. "If I can just have your-"

Speke was already running down the corridor beyond her desk. On both sides of him gla.s.s displayed images of rooms full of tape decks or screens that were flickering almost as much as his eyes, and here was one crowded with students whose faces looked unformed. Even Stef's did. She was lecturing to them, though Speke couldn't hear her voice until he flung open the heavy door; then she said less than a word, which hadn't time to sound like her voice. "You said we agreed I'd try to put them out of my head," Speke shouted. "Who? Who are we?"

"Not here, Roger. Not now."

Speke closed his eyes to shut out the flickering faces. "Who's speaking? Who do you think you sound like?"

"I'm sorry, everyone. Please excuse us. He's..."

He didn't know what sign Stef was making as her voice trailed off, and he didn't want to see. "Don't lie to me," he shouted. "Don't try to put me off. I've seen Vanessa. I won't leave until you show me Lesley."

Without warning he was shoved backwards, and the door thumped shut in front of him. "Roger," Stef's flattened voice said in his ear. "You have to remember. Lesley and Vanessa are-It wasn't your fault, you mustn't keep blaming yourself, but they're dead."

Her voice seemed to be reaching him from a long way off, beyond the flickering. "Who says so?" he heard himself ask in as distant a voice.

"You did. You told me and you told the doctor. It was nothing to do with you, remember. It happened after you split up."

"I split up?" Speke repeated in a voice that felt dead. "No, not me. You did, maybe. They did."

"Roger, don't-"

He didn't know which voice was trying to imitate Stef's, but it couldn't call him back. It shrank behind him like an image on a monitor that had been switched off, as no doubt her face was shrinking. He fled between the warehouses, which at least seemed too solid to transform unexpectedly, though wasn't everything a ghost, an image which he perceived only after it had existed? Mustn't that also be true of himself? He didn't want to be alone with that notion, especially when the echoes of his footsteps sounded close to turning into a voice, and so he fled towards the shops, the crowds.

That was a mistake. At a distance the faces that converged on him seemed capable of taking any form, and when they came closer they were too flat, strips of images of faces that were being moved behind one another or through one another by some complicated trick which he was unable to see through. Their hubbub sounded like a single voice which had been electronically transformed in an attempt to give the impression of many, and as far as he could hear it, it seemed to be chanting in a bewildering variety of unrelated rhythms: "Dum, rum, sum, b.u.m..." The faces were swelling, crowding around him wherever he ran with his hands over his ears. When he saw an alley dividing the blank walls of two dress shops he fought his way to it, his elbows encountering obstructions which felt less substantial than they were trying to appear. The walls took away some of the pressure of the voices, and when he lowered his hands from his ears he saw that the alley led to a bar.

It was the realest place he could see-so real that he was almost sure he could smell alcohol. He had plenty to drink at home, but the thought of drinking near the open window on the fifteenth storey aggravated his panic. A few drinks ought to help the image stabilise, and then he might go4iome. He tiptoed to the end of the alley so that his echoes couldn't follow him, and let himself into the bar.

For a moment he was afraid it wasn't open for business. A solitary tube was lit above the counter at the far end of the long room, but n.o.body was sitting at the small round tables in the dimness. As Speke closed the door behind him, however, a figure came out of a doorway behind the counter. Speke's ears began to throb in time with the flickering as he tried to be prepared to hear what he was afraid to hear. It didn't matter, it mustn't matter, so long as he got his drink. He stepped forward, and the other came to meet him, saying "There's only mum" and then "There's only me." Neither voice was bothering to disguise itself now, even as human. As the face advanced into the light Speke thought that behind every bar was a mirror, and all at once he was afraid to open his mouth.

A Street Was Chosen (1991).

A street was chosen. Within its parameters, homes were randomly selected. Preliminary research yielded details of the occupants as follows: A (husband, insurance salesman, 30; wife, 28; infant daughter, 18 months) B (widow, 67) C (husband, 73; wife, 75; son, library a.s.sistant, 38) D (mother, bank clerk, 32; daughter, 3) E (husband, social worker, 35; wife, social worker, 34) F (electrician, male, 51; a.s.sistant, male, 25) G (husband, 42; wife, industrial chemist, 38; son, 4; infant son, 2) H (mother, 86; son, teacher, 44; son's wife, headmistress, 41; granddaughter, 12; grandson, 11) I (window-cleaner, male, 53).

J (tax officer, female, 55).

K (milkman, male, 39) L (waiter, 43).

It was noted that subjects I-L occupied apartments in the same house. Further preliminary observation established that: subject B wrote letters to newspapers the children of couples A and G visited each other's homes to play granddaughter H sat with child D while mother D was elsewhere on an average of 1 evening per week husband G experienced bouts of temporary impotence lasting between 6 and 8 days elder F performed s.e.xual acts with his partner in order to maintain the relations.h.i.+p (1) subject L had recently been released into the community after treatment for schizophrenia.

It was decided that stimuli should be applied gradually and with caution. During an initial 8-night period, the following actions were taken: (1, i) each night a flower was uprooted from the garden of subject B, and all evidence of removal was erased.

(1, ii) the lights in house H were caused to switch on at random intervals for periods of up to 5 minutes between the hours of 3 and 6 in the morning.

(1, iii) on alternate nights, subject J was wakened shortly after entering deep sleep by telephone calls purporting to advertise life insurance.

(1,iv) the tinfoil caps of milk-bottles delivered to subject D were removed after delivery, and feeding nipples subst.i.tuted.

At the end of 8 days, it was noted that subject B was less inclined than previously to engage her neighbours in conversation, and more p.r.o.ne to argue or to take offence. From the 7th day onwards she was seen to spend extended periods at the windows which overlooked her garden.

Subjects F were employed by couple H to trace the source of an apparent electrical malfunction. It was observed that mother H became increasingly hostile to her son's wife both during this process and after electricians F had failed to locate any fault in the wiring. Observations suggested that she blamed either her daughter-in-law or her grandchildren for tampering with the electricity in order to disturb her sleep.

Subject J was observed to approach Subject A in order to obtain names and addresses of insurance companies which advertised by telephone. It was noted that when the list provided by A failed to yield the required explanation, A undertook to make further enquiries on J's behalf.

It was observed that subject D initially responded to the subst.i.tution of nipples as if it were a joke. After 2 days, however, she was seen to accuse subject K of the subst.i.tution. At the end of the 8-day period she cancelled the delivery and ordered milk from a rival company. It was decided to discontinue the subst.i.tution for an indefinite period.

After observations were completed, the following stimuli were applied during a period of 15 days: (2, i) An anonymous letter based on a computer a.n.a.lysis of B's prose style was published in the free newspaper received by all subjects, objecting to the existence of househusbands and claiming that the writer was aware of two people who committed adultery while their children played together.

(2, ii) Every third night as subject L walked home, he was approached by religious pamphleteers whose faces had been altered to resemble the other tenants of his building in the order I, K, J, I, K.