Ancient Images by Ramsey Campbell Read Free Book Online

Graham. I don't know what it is, except there's a dead smell about the place. Let me give you what I found and then we'll go."
        He took down several volumes of an encyclopedia, revealing a wall safe between two bookshelves. "Where are you living?" Sandy said.
        "With my parents while I put myself back together. Would you believe they're trying to fix me up with a nice girl? If I don't move out soon they'll be turning me into a stockbroker like the old man, training it into the City five days a week with my bowler on my lap and my portfolio stuffed with lunch." He pulled back his cuffs like a safecracker. "Shush a minute."
        She was glad he felt able to put on a show for her, though she knew it was also for himself. The sunlight was creeping toward the bedroom, where a dressing gown lay on the bed. The tumblers clicked, and Toby reached into the safe. "This will mean more to you than it does to me," he said.
        It was a dog-eared red notebook. At the top of the first page Graham had written TOWER OF FEAR in elaborate capitals. Each of the next few pages bore a different name and address and telephone number, all scored through lightly. "I decided against giving it to the police." Toby said. "It didn't seem right to have the police upsetting more people for no reason. Graham said most of them were old and frail."
        "They're the ones he contacted about the film."
        "Most of them worked on it, I think. It's not as if any of them would have come here after the film," he said with a hint of defensiveness. "At least the police seem to have crossed me off their list of suspects, though they couldn't find any prints." He closed the safe and walled it up with books. "Maybe that notebook can prove our friend at the Daily Friend wrong."
        "Did you call him?"
        "What I called him is what you should be asking, except it's not for your delicate ears. And I wanted to know if he cared to set his reputation against Graham's. He blustered and then he shut up. I expect to read an apology next week."
        "Did you tell him you'd seen the film yourself?"
        "I only saw a snippet, old Boris up a tower watching someone being chased across a field at night, and to tell you the absolute truth, I wasn't anxious to see any more. Neither of us wanted to be the one who switched off the lights that night."
        "It must have been some film if it could do that to you both."
        "It must have been the film, yes. What else could it have been?"
        She hadn't meant it that way, and his response made her feel unexpectedly nervous. The sunlight had reached the bed now, and she realized that a shadow on the duvet must have been the long shape she'd mistaken for a dressing gown. Toby was right about the dead smell, she noticed, a faint stench like stale charred pastry that reminded her of the last time she was here. "I'm glad you thought I should have this," she said, slipping the notebook into her handbag, and made for the door.
        She walked Toby to Victoria Station and left him at the barrier. On her way into the Underground she thought he'd followed her, but there was nobody to be seen behind her on the escalator that sailed downward with a faint inconsolable squeal. She sat on a bench on the empty platform, the breaths of oncoming trains stirring the hairs on the back of her neck. She leafed through Graham's notebook, but couldn't concentrate; she found she had to keep glancing along the platform toward the tunnel. Some fault in the mechanism made the train doors reopen after she boarded, as if someone had leaped on at the last moment. The galloping rush of the wheels made her think of a hunt in the dark.
        Someone was walking a dog in Queen's Wood. Sandy couldn't see the owner, but she heard the animal in the undergrowth. Once she glimpsed its ribs through a gloomy clump of bushes. Even if it was a greyhound, it looked in need of feeding. She would have shouted to the