Ramsey Campbell - 1976 - The Doll Who Ate His Mother by Ramsey Campbell Read Free Book Online

“That wouldn’t have been much by itself,” he
said. “I mean, he was a nasty morbid child, but nothing that could bring me
back to Liverpool this way. But there was something else. What he did to the
school bully.”
                 Clare
felt herself grow tense. This was what had brought Edmund to see her. He was
about to give form to the figure which had loomed up through the orange glow,
peering in at her.
                 “The
bully’s name was Cyril,” Edmund said. “With a name like that, perhaps he had to
be a bully. He was in my year, but he behaved years younger. He was a big lout,
though. He picked a fight with me once, I think because someone had dared him.
He got in a couple of good ones before I knocked him down,” and he tapped the
dent in his nose.
                 “He
had to pick on Kelly sooner or later. Kelly was a fat boy, you see. Now the
whole school had one playground, juniors and seniors together. It was supposed
to make the older boys take responsibility for the younger. But most of the
time you got the older ones bullying the younger or feeling them up, and those
of us who didn’t tended not to interfere. So it meant that Cyril could follow
Kelly around the playground every day, calling him Billy Bunter, Fatty
Arbuckle, trying to nudge him into a fight.
                 “Now Cyril was a butcher’s son. He always used to smell of
raw meat, him and his clothes. When he was younger we made fun of that, holding
our noses, you know. That probably helped make him a bully.
                 “Well,
I wanted to see what Kelly would do, you can imagine. I followed them all over
the playground. Cyril kept it up for a week at least. Until
one very hot day, when he smelled like a butcher’s all by himself. And
Kelly turned on him. Cyril had said something. “You look like a tub of lard,”
something like that. And just as if he were answering a remark, Kelly looked at
him and said, ‘You stink.’
                 “That
was odd, you know. Kids aren’t that unemotional. He looked just as if he’d had
the thought and said it. Of course Cyril thought he’d got his fight at last. So
he said, ‘ You what?’
                 “‘You
stink,’ Kelly said.
                 “Well,
Cyril brought his arm back to belt him across the mouth. He’d flung his jacket
off, and Kelly must have got the whole of that butcher’s smell. And I saw that
expression come rushing into his eyes. I think I might even have warned Cyril,
if there’d been time.
                 “You’ve
seen kids fight. Girls fight worse than boys, they tell me. But you haven’t
seen anything like this. Cyril never managed to hit him at all. Because Kelly
went straight under his guard and fastened his teeth in his upper arm, just
above the elbow.
                 “And
he wouldn’t let go. Cyril tore at his hair and clawed his face, but he wouldn’t
let go. They must have been able to hear Cyril screaming in the school, because
half the masters came running. The one on playground duty was strolling about
with a book, but he threw that book away and ran over so fast he knocked
someone down. But even he couldn’t get Kelly to let go, not until he dragged
him off. When he did, Kelly took a piece of Cyril’s arm with him.”
                 He
searched Clare’s face for horror. She was wondering how she would have coped if
it had happened at her school. “The worst thing,” he said, “which I think you
need to hear to understand, is that when he’d dragged him off, the master had
to hold Kelly’s nose and take hold of his jaw to force him to open his mouth.”
                 “God,”
she said. “Poor kid.” She realized she meant both of
them.
                 “Kelly’s
mother came to the school that afternoon,” he said. “If she was his mother—she
was pretty old. A woman, anyway. Our classroom