Incarnate by Ramsey Campbell Read Free Book Online

wake. Her eyes were blurred and stinging, and rubbing them only made them worse. The face had been between Mummy’s reflection and her own, but when she turned to look the carriage was deserted. The doors at either end were miles away. She made herself turn again to the window. The lace was still there, if you could call it a face. Nothing was clear in the bright pink oval except the eyes.
    “Mummy!” she cried, tugging at her hands. If Mummy woke, the face would go away, please let that be true! “Mummy, Mummy,” she pleaded, tugging so desperately that she was afraid Mummy would topple off her seat. The edge of her vision was a rushing blur, but something pink was closer, hovering. Susan twisted Mummy’s hands and saw her eyelids flutter, but then Mummy sank into sleep again. Now Susan thought of something that would wake her up, though she couldn’t have said why it should. Mummy,” she cried, “why really have we got to move?” Mummy’s eyes wavered open. If the look in them meant that she knew the answer, Susan no longer wanted to know. The next moment they closed again, and Susan dug her nails into the limp hands. “Mummy!” she screamed. Mummy jerked awake and snatched her hands away. Good God, child, what’s wrong?”
    “There was—” But there was nothing. The carriage was deserted except for her and Mummy, and so was the reflection. There was nothing except a gray glow. “Try and have a little doze if you’re bored,” Mummy said, closing her eyes again. “For heaven’s sake let me get some sleep.”

5
    T HE NORTHERN TOWN was deep in snow. Molly dined in the hotel’s cavernous dining room among deserted tables and echoes of the limping waiter, then went up to her room. Large slow melting flakes brushed the window. The television said it was Britain’s worst November for more than ten years and predicted that December would be worse. She hoped Ben was getting soaked out there. Perhaps now he was regretting leaving her behind.
    “The fewer of us who are at the interview the better,’^ he’d said, but she was sure he had been getting his own back for yesterday’s argument about the rooms. She wished she could tell him that she was going to work with Martin, but she needed to understand her own feelings.
    Ben ought to have had this room after all, for a bulge in the carpet under the bed yielded up two pornographic magazines, dated next year. She put them back and tried to read the paperback of War and Peace she’d bought that afternoon. The opening pages seemed familiar, yet she was certain she had never attempted the novel before. It felt like a kind of double vision and was so distracting that soon she gave up. She was sleepy, that was all.
    She was in her pajamas when someone knocked lightly at the door. “Yes?” she called.
    “It’s me, Molly.”
    It infuriated her that he assumed she would know who it was. “What do you want?” she said, not moving.
    “Open the door, will you?” His voice was as muted as his knock had been. “We can’t talk like this.”
    The sooner she got rid of him, the sooner she could sleep. She bundled herself into her Finnish coat and opened the door a crack. “What is it, Ben?”
    “Can’t you let me in for a moment? No need to have everyone listening.”
    Just then Roy looked out of the room he was sharing with Ben. Roy was the sound man, small and rotund, given to showing her photographs of his prize budgies and his children. “Were you knocking?”
    “Not for you.” Ben glared at him until he closed the door. “Well?”
    “Whatever it is, please keep it short,” Molly said, and stepped back. “I need my sleep.”
    He eased the door shut like a thief but stayed by it, holding up his empty hands as if that showed his intentions were harmless. His blue jowls looked freshly shaved, his moustache and his sleek hair just combed. “I wanted to thank you for getting us here in one piece. Thank you properly, I mean. You’re a damn good