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

was
opposite the headmaster’s study. My desk was by the window. I could see Kelly
and the head sitting in there, waiting. Then the woman and Kelly’s class
teacher came in. The head had told us to close all the windows, so we couldn’t
hear. But we could see him telling her what had happened. Then she began to
tell him something.
                 “I
don’t know what that was. But I saw the effect it had on the class teacher.
They’d moved Kelly to the back of the room, where I couldn’t see him, and the
head was out of sight round the window. But that teacher—I’ve never seen anyone
so crippled with horror. He just stood there going white. The woman was
pointing her thumb back at Kelly as if she couldn’t bear to look at him, and
the teacher was staring back at him as if he were trying to feel pity but couldn’t get through the horror. He was off school for
weeks after that, that teacher. He was always fond of his kids.”
                 What
could a child of eleven have done, so to affect a
teacher who was fond of him? Clare felt the horror now, close to her amid the
murmur of the evening. Suppose it had been one of her class—what could be so
horrible about a child? “Didn’t you ever find out what she’d said?” Her voice
shook before she could take hold of it.
                 “Never. That was his last day at that school, you see. Oddly
enough, he moved to a school near where I lived. And I left school for good a
month later. I saw him once or twice on buses. In fact, it was wondering what
there was in his past to make him behave as he had that got me interested in
the kind of thing I write about. But when I saw him on the buses, that
expression of his had gone. I thought the business with Cyril must have cured
him. Now I’m sure he was simply biding his time.”
                 Clare
stared behind her at the open window, at the murmuring dark. He was somewhere
out there. He had leaned toward her in the orange light, peering, hurrying back
to the lamp standard in the mirror and stooping. “You’ve got all that written down, haven’t you?” she said harshly. He couldn’t have Rob
to use in his glib storytelling.
                 “Does
it show? I’m sorry if I seemed unfeeling. I’ve had twelve years to think about
it, remember. I send off the chapters as soon as they’re written, in case they
want revisions.” He was searching her face anxiously; his nose twitched. “As
you say, it’s my job,” he said. “I told you this in all good faith. You know
his name now, which is more than the police do. I can’t stop you telling them.”
                 He
looked like a child confronted with betrayal. “Of course I won’t tell them,”
she said impatiently.
                 “Then
you’ll help me? It isn’t only for my book. He needs to be caught for his own
sake as much as anyone’s.”
                 “I
don’t know.” All right, she was wrong to condemn him for doing his job: she was
still uneasy. The spell of his story was wearing off, and she knew that
something had been missing. “I see how all you’ve said fits together,” she
said. “But I can’t see why you’re sure he was the man who killed my brother. I
can’t see how you can have been sure enough to come down from London.”
                 “Because of your brother? That wouldn’t have brought me by itself ,” he said. “Don’t you read the papers?”
                 “I
buy them mostly for the crosswords. Why?”
                 “Because your crash wasn’t the only thing. There was an old
lady and her dog, nearly four weeks ago.”
                 Thursday, August 7
                 He
was lying in the earth.
                 There
was a house on top of him.
                 He
was gazing down at the earth beneath which he lay. He began to dig. He had to
find himself, beneath